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THE BOY-EDITOR. Illustrated. 

THE HOME-COMERS. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 


THE BOY EDITOR 




(p. 102) 

BURNING SHEET AFTER SHEET OF WRITTEN FOOLSCAP 



THE BOY EDITOR 

A Story for Boys and Girls 


BY 

WINIFRED KIRKLAND 

; 1 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
®t)t JUbn^itre CamiribBt 

1913 



COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


Published September 1QX3 


CONTENTS 


I. The Problem i 

11 . The Election 28 

III. The Editor-in-Chief ... 48 

IV. The Monograph .... 67 

V. The Debate 85 

VI. The Awakening .... 109 

VII. The New Mentor . . . .132 

VIII. The Mentor Alliance. . .158 

IX. The Speech 187 

X. The Career 21 1 


^he Frontispiece is from a dramsing by 
Harold J. Cue 


THE BOY EDITOR 

CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM 

*‘Mr. Dorrel, the Mentor must be better 
than ever this year; that goes without 
saying.” 

The schoolmaster glanced at the clear, 
resolute gray eyes, at the clear, resolute red 
mouth, and twinkled a little, for Jeanie 
Campbell was always so earnest. She sat 
just as she had lightly flung herself on enter- 
ing, sideways on the chair near his office desk, 
one arm running along the” back, and one 
hearty square-shod foot well in evidence. 
Alan Campbell had done his best to rectify 
Dame Nature’s mistake in making his only 
son a girl. Jeanie had only recently allowed 
her curly reddish hair to grow long enough to 
tie back, only recently allowed her seventeen- 


2 


THE BOY EDITOR 


year-old skirts to reach her ankles. Looking 
into her keen, unconscious eyes, John Dorrel 
sometimes wondered when Jeanie Campbell 
would discover that she was n’t a boy. 

“Yes,” nodded Jeanie, “we Seniors this 
year have got to make the Mentor the best 
school paper that ever happened. O Mr. 
Dorrel, don’t you love the feel of beginnings, 
the feel of each new school year, for in- 
stance?” 

“Any special plans for the Mentor this 
year, Jeanie?” 

“Plans before the election, 'Mr. Dorrel?” 
But the pink deepened beneath Jeanie’s 
freckles, and the corners of her mouth 
dimpled, for why should either of them 
pretend that the school’s choice of an editor 
was not already a foregone conclusion?! 

“It all depends on the editor-in-chief, 
and I always regard the Mentor as one of 
the biggest possibilities of the Senior year.” 
The schoolmaster was earnest enough him- 
self now, as he spoke. 


THE PROBLEM 


3 


all feel that way about it/^ answered 
Jeanie, grave, and a little tense, facing him 
with her clear look of responsibility realized 
and assumed, ‘‘and I — I mean we, all of us, 
or anybody who gets elected — will do our 
straight best, Mr. Dorrel.’’ 

“Mapleton Academy expects a good deal 
of an editor, besides editing,” mused John 
Dorrel, as casually as if this were not a state 
of affairs he had for years labored to bring 
about. “ I suppose that ’s why Sidney Lones- 
dale failed to get the Vote of Approval last 
May.” 

“We had tOjbe honest about it,” said 
Jeanie. “Sidney wasn’t the kind of editor 
we want, and we had to say so in the Vote. 
It is n’t as'^if the Vote of Approval meant 
just the money.” 

For that the Vote of Approval should 
carry with it all money made by the Mentor 
management during the year was another 
thing that John Dorrel had brought about; 
for what was the use of a school, thought he, 


4 


THE BOY EDITOR 


if it did n’t prepare boys and girls a little for 
the stiffness and sternness of the real world 
that was waiting for them? 

‘‘The editorship of the Mentor requires a 
public-spirited citizen,” John Dorrel con- 
tinued his casual musing; “and it’s no fun, 
always, to be a public-spirited citizen.” 

“I think it is,” cried Jeanie, “fun to be a 
public-spirited citizen!” 

And the schoolmaster laughed, knowing 
well that exactly so must Alan Campbell’s 
daughter have replied 1 

“I trust you to be that, Jeanie.” 

“But, Mr. Dorrel,” reproved Jeanie, “I 
have n’t been elected.” 

“Not yet, that’s true, but perhaps you 
have some ideas ready.” 

“Oh, yes!” And Jeanie’s cheeks and eyes 
began to glow, for she was one who required 
more worlds than books to conquer. “One 
thing I’ve thought of; I think it would be 
splendid if the Mentor should take up the 
new Academy building and make a regular 


THE PROBLEM 


5 

campaign of it. Perhaps we could get the 
whole town excited, and that would mean a 
lot of subscriptions outside of the school, and 
perhaps weM really get the new building 
that way. Would n’t that be splendid!” 

Professor Dorrel, to Jeanie’s puzzlement, 
was utterly silent, so that she repeated, 
'‘Would n’t it be splendid! And we need a 
new school so much more than that town 
hall people keep talking about.” 

"We need both,” said John Dorrel 
quietly. 

"Oh, yes, of course, but we need the new 
school more. Look at this building!” and 
Jeanie flung out an emphatic hand toward 
the cracked ceiling and the crooked window. 
"It’s fairly tumbling down on our heads!” 

"Oh, no, not quite so bad as that, Jeanie.” 

"Well, anyway, the new school is one 
thing the Mentor could take up ! and then 
there’s another I’ve thought of. You know 
those ‘Back-to-the-Farm’ letters in the 
Chronicle signed 'Old Fogy’? Well, I think 


6 


THE BOY EDITOR 


it would be fun for the Mentor to answer 
them with an ‘Out-into-the-World’ series, a 
sort of debate between the town paper and 
the school paper. That would be another 
way of making the Mentor popular out in the 
town as well as in the school. Then I Ve a 
lot of other ideas for making it interesting to 
the school itself, for after last year something 
must be done about the Mentor!"’ 

‘‘Suppose,” the schoolmaster paused, 
“merely suppose, Jeanie, that something 
was done about the Mentor, done earnestly 
and devotedly, and yet even so, suppose this 
year’s editor also failed to get the Vote of 
Approval next May ? ” 

“The school would n’t be so mean, Mr. 
Dorrel!” 

“You can never tell about people, you 
know.” John Dorrel was examining the 
point of a pencil lying upon his blotter. 

“Mr. Dorrel, do you mean that, perhaps, 
— do you mean that you think I like ap- 
proval?” 


THE PROBLEM 


7 


‘‘Don’t you, perhaps, Jeanie, a little?” 
His dark, frank eyes twinkled at her wide 
and deepening gray ones. 

“Per — haps,” she admitted; “I never 
thought of it before. I always just go rushing 
ahead doing things. But ye — es, perhaps, 
Mr. Dorrel, I do like approval pretty well. 
At least, I like people to say, ‘ Thank you.’ ” 
“’T is safer not, Jeanie, for some of us. 
We can’t always tell how people are going to 
take us. Best not to count on thank-yous.” 
He shrugged his shoulders genially. “The 
editorship of the Mentor is an education in 
people.” Then, seeing in Jeanie’s wide eyes 
his words take root against the future, he 
changed the subject abruptly. “By the way, 
Jeanie, how ’s your boarder getting on?” 

A quick laugh drove the gravity from 
Jeanie’s lips. “He ’s one, is n’t he, who needs 
an education in people? Mr. Dorrel, I 
honestly think he’s the queerest boy I ever 
knew! Truly, truly, something’s got to be 
done about that boy this year!” 


8 


\THE BOY EDITOR 

‘"Well, did n’t I send him to board with 
the Campbells?” 

Jeanie’s quick laugh rang. “He’s been 
with the Campbells two weeks, and I don’t 
see that either father or I have done him 
much good!” Then back came the earnest- 
ness, “It’s dreadful, really! Why, that boy 
has been in Mapleton Academy a whole year, 
and I don’t believe he knows six people in 
school by sight! He doesn’t know a thing 
that happens, never comes to a meeting of 
any kind, and should n’t you think he ’d be aw- 
fully lonesome that way ? ” A maternal depth 
softened Jeanie’s eyes. “But he doesn’t 
seem even to know he ’s lonesome. He does n’t 
see, does n’t hear, does n’t look. How can he 
go on being that way, Mr. Dorrel?” 

“He must n’t!” 

“And it’s a funny thing — while he always 
goes along with his head in a cloud and never 
seems to see any one an5rwhere, yet every- 
body somehow is always watching him. You 
can’t help it. Ever since his essay took Major 


THE PROBLEM 


9 


Sturtevant’s prize last spring, and was 
printed in the Chronicle, everybody has 
watched Spencer Briggs and expected things 
of him; everybody in school and people in 
town, too, even father/’ 

“Your father?” inquired John Dorrel, 
with quick interest. 

“Yes, I think so; father has n’t said so, of 
course, but father and I are pretty well 
acquainted, and I think, and hope, father is 
looking Spencer over. You know for years 
he’s been watching the Academy Seniors, to 
see if some boy won’t prove to be just what 
he wants. I wish it might be Spencer, but 
I ’m afraid it won’t be, — not if Spencer does 
n’t wake up and let himself out a little.” 

“There is n’t much ahead for Spencer if he 
does n’t, I ’m afraid,” frowned John Dorrel. 

“I don’t know what’s ahead for him after 
school, Mr. Dorrel. He has n’t any money 
except what he can earn. I must say that I 
don’t think that grandfather of his is very 
generous or good to him!” 


lo THE BOY EDITOR 

^Tsn’t it better for Spencer to help 
himself?’’ 

‘‘No, I don’t think so, Mr. Dorrel!” 
Jeanie’s cheeks flamed with her emphasis. 
“I do not think so! I think it would help 
Spencer Briggs a whole lot if he’d sometimes 
let somebody help him with something!” 

“Can’t you manage that somehow?’’ 

“No! And I’ve tried! Of course, I don’t 
mean help with money. I mean Spencer 
Briggs needs to be helped, and to know he’s 
being helped, too! He’s too stuck-up!” The 
tempery red ringlets shook on Jeanie’s fore- 
head ; then in an instant her heat was gone. 
“I’m awfully sorry for him, truly, but what 
can anybody do?” 

“Jeanie, you must! You must think of a 
way to educate Spencer Briggs in people.” 

“Well, but, Mr. Dorrel, I’m trying and 
trying to think of a way. But what can you 
do for a boy when he does n’t even see you ? 
He does n’t know anything about people. He 
does n’t even know how to shake hands ! And 


THE PROBLEM 


II 


it is n’t only this year I think about, but 
next year. A boy that can study like that 
and think like that and write like that, — he 
can’t go back to his grandfather’s farm on 
Lost Mountain!” 

Then both of them jumped at a deep- 
growled voice, ‘‘What’s the matter with a 
farm on Lost Mountain?” 

Hiram Scott, acting as office monitor on 
that Friday afternoon, and knowing the 
precedence of parents and guardians over 
mere pupils, had quietly admitted a tall old 
man as a mischievous intimation to Jeanie 
that her time was up. 

“Anybody here got anything against Lost 
Mountain?” 

John Dorrel had sprung up with frankly 
extended hand. “Nobody here has any- 
thing against Lost Mountain. It has sent us 
a prize pupil.” 

But the grim old face appeared unap- 
peased. The bushy grizzled eyebrows drew 
down over the keen blue eyes. “It was the 


12 


THE BOY EDITOR 


lady I heard speaking!’’ The stranger 
regarded Jeanie aggressively. 

In an amused effort at amenity, John 
Dorrel presented Jeanie, — ‘‘This is Miss 
Jeanie Campbell.” 

“And this,” elucidated the keen old mouth 
above its fringe of beard,“ is Stephen Pelham.” 

The old man and the girl stood regarding 
each other with level, challenging eyes. 
They were both of them given to direct 
thoughts and words. Jeanie was wondering 
where she had seen a forehead just like that, 
broad and high, with a space of white above 
a space of tawny sunburn. 

“I have n’t anything against Lost Moun- 
tain, Mr. Pelham,” said Jeanie firmly, 
“except that it’s no place for a boy as clever 
as Spencer Briggs.” 

The blue eyes slowly studied Jeanie from 
her topmost red curl to the square toes 
of her sturdy shoes. “Humph!” growled 
Stephen Pelham and turned from her ab- 
ruptly to Professor Dorrel./ 


THE PROBLEM 


13 


Both men had obviously silently dismissed 
Jeanie, but with her hand upon the door 
suddenly she turned around. Jeanie Camp- 
bell was not readily diverted when she was 
in the full flood of any thought. Now an 
idea had come to her, sweeping through her, 
shaking her! She stood with her back against 
the door, white and wide-eyed, seeking the 
schoolmaster’s face. Her words reached his 
ear before she turned and went hurrying into 
the hall, — ‘"Mr. Dorrel, I’ve thought of a 
way!” 

John Dorrel turned to his visitor to 
find the strong old face all puckered with 
humor. Stephen Pelham jerked his head 
in the direction of the retreating foot- 
steps. 

“Fine girl! Whose?” 

“Alan Campbell’s.” 

“Editor Campbell’s?” 

“Yes.” 

“She like him?” 

“Very.”- 


14 


THE BOY EDITOR 


“Blood tells/" muttered Stephen Pelham; 
“blood tells/" 

“Your grandson takes his meals at the 
Campbells"/" 

The visitor started. “How d"you know 
I had a grandson? Ever seen me before?"" 

“Never. I knew you by the resemblance. 
The boy is very like you/" 

“The boy — like me! Spencer — like 
me !"" There was the sound of a grim chuckle, 
then silence. “Yes, it"s true. He"s like me. 
But he don"t know it."" Again silence. “And 
he would n"t want to know it either!"" 

John Dorrel lent himself silently to the 
abrupt, jerked-out confidences. He answered 
questions but asked none. 

“Boy pretty well fixed this year? Pretty 
comfortable where he boards?"" 

“He sleeps here in the office as he did last 
year when he was janitor. But he takes his 
meals at the Campbells". I fancy he"s com- 
fortable. The Campbells are good provid- 
ers! You might step up and look the place 


THE PROBLEM 


15 

over. You’d find Spencer there at supper- 
time.” 

Stephen Pelham shook his head with a 
twitching, cynical smile. “I don’t want the 
boy should lack this year. I want you to 
keep an eye to that, Professor. That’s what 
I came to see you about. I want him to be 
able to put all his time to study. I don’t 
want he should lack. But I ’m not here to go 
calling on him. ’T would n’t please him. 
Herbert Spencer Briggs don’t take any 
great stock in his Lost Mountain relatives! 
Not enough to take a free cent from ’em, if 
he knew it. Needn’t know it, if you’ll 
manage. Guess he has enough for one while, 
though! I saw to that! Wages!” There was 
the sound of a slow, deep chuckle. ‘'But I 
would n’t have him know. Could n’t say 
what he’d do if he knew. Like as not 
light out for good, like his father. Reckon 
you’ve had some experience trying to get 
inside some of these tight-mouthed young- 
uns?” 


1 6 THE BOY EDITOR 

“I suppose youVe tried to get inside?’’ 
John Dorrel smiled. 

‘‘Don’t know where to begin to try. 
Did n’t want to get inside at first, to tell the 
truth. Kind of got to not expecting much of 
him summer a year ago, when Mary first 
brought him home with her. Put him out in 
the fields then, but it did n’t work — neither 
did he! Different last summer. Put his mind 
on it. Has a mind! Folks think so, don’t 
they? That girl just now seemed to think he 
was smart.” 

“He is.” 

“Suppose you saw that essay of his last 
spring, ‘The'Two Sieges of the Civil War’?” 
Stephen Pelham tried hard to keep the glow 
out of his sharp old eyes, the crinkling smile 
from his grizzled lips. “Strikes me. Profes- 
sor, that was writing!’' 

“It was!” the schoolmaster’s enthusiasm 
answered the grandfather’s. 

“I’ve had an eye on him ever since that 
piece came out in the paper. I’m watching 


THE PROBLEM 


17 


him this year. IVe my plans. No telling 
what he’ll say to ’em, though. And it’ll be 
for him to decide. It’s his own job, his life 
is.” 

John Dorrel waited patiently for further 
explanation, but only the old low chuckle 
came. It was a matter of stimulation to a 
listener to attach Stephen Pelham’s pronouns 
to their proper places, for he had a preference 
for omitting them. ‘‘Thinks I don’t notice. 
Do notice. Found my stacks of old news- 
papers up-garret. Walked off with a lot of 
’em. Studies ’em for the history, like enough. 
Suppose he thinks I don’t know they’re good 
for anything. Me! Wonder who he thinks 
kept ’em all in order all these years! It’s 
been my way of getting off the mountain, — 
papers ! Used to think I had to take a heap of 
’em. Find one ’s enough since the Scotchman 
came. Don’t take anything but the Chron- 
icle now. Don’t need so many papers, be- 
sides, since I don’t care so much ’bout getting 
away from the mountain as I used to. Not so 


THE BOY EDITOR 


bad, the mountain, when you once give in 
and make friends with it. Takes grit, though, 
more than some boys have, to stay by a farm 
on Lost Mountain. And sometimes, looking 
back, I wonder — Here Stephen Pelham 
fell into a silence too long for even John 
Dorrel’s patience. 

‘‘You Ve been following the ‘ Back-to-the- 
Farm’ letters in the Chronicle.?’’ he asked at 
length. “They have interested me.” 

“Have they? I’ve read ’em, yes. But 
mostly talk, don’t you think?” 

“No, I’ve thought they were mostly 
sense.” 

“Don’t know ’bout that. Don’t know 
’bout that.” Again a thoughtful pause until 
the old man was recalled by the other. 

“Your collection of newspapers must be 
most valuable, Mr. Pelham.” 

There were no more silences! Stephen 
Pelham was off on his hobby. There was no 
pause in the flow of pithy, staccato sentences, 
scanty of pronouns. But the fact that he was 


THE PROBLEM 


19 


habitually chary of speech was plain from his 
confusion at the sound of suddenly outpour- 
ing feet upon the battered stairs, announcing 
the four o’clock dismissal of school and the 
fact that he, silent old Stephen Pelham, must 
have talked away a good hour and a half of 
the schoolmaster’s Friday afternoon office 
hours. His rush for the office door was comi- 
cally precipitate, and his retreat back into the 
room even more so. The chuckle was humor- 
ous but a shade nervous. ‘'He almost caught 
me. Is he off for good now, d’ye think?” 

“Off for an hour. I’ve at last convinced 
him of the need of exercise after school.” 

During the hour of parental interviews 
that followed, John Dorrel’s thoughts kept 
up a steady undercurrent of effort to solve a 
problem. At five o’clock the problem himself 
knocked and entered. His bright spectacled 
eyes greeted the schoolmaster with the glow 
which they always had for him, no matter 
how unseeing they might be in other direc- 
tions. Looking at him. Professor Dorrel 


20 


THE BOY EDITOR 


wondered what other changes the summer 
had made in Herbert Spencer Briggs in addi- 
tion to the contrast of white and sunburn on 
his forehead, which made him look more 
than ever like his grandfather. 

‘"Are you very busy, Mr. Dorrel.?” 

The Professor leaned back comfortably in 
his sagging chair, clasping his slim brown 
hands behind his head. 

“All through with work for the week, 
Spencer, and ready for talk. Let ’s have some ! 
And there are no Friday night janitor jobs to 
interfere with your time, either, this year. I 
warrant you don’t miss them, eh, Spencer?” 

“No, I am very glad to be relieved of them. 
My grandfather paid me this summer, for 
working on the farm, fifty dollars a month.” 

“Indeed? That, I believe, is reasonably 
good wages for a farm laborer in this part 
of the country!” 

“Just the usual wages, he explained from 
the beginning. I would not have been willing 
to be under any obligations. I am very glad 


THE PROBLEM 


21 


to have the money, for I should not wish any 
outside responsibilities to interfere with my 
work this year. Such a very important year! 
Why, I feel as if almost anything might be 
made of this year, as it opens up before me ; 
only last night I received a new suggestion; 
and then it’s my last year with you, Mr. 
Dorrel.” 

The flattery of those glowing young spec- 
tacles brought a twinkle to John Dorrel’s 
deep-brown eyes, as he hinted, “And your 
last year with a good many other people, too. 
And what’s the new suggestion, Spencer, and 
where does it come from?” 

“I want to talk it over with you, Mr. 
Dorrel. It has to do with my preparation for 
my career, my profession.” 

“That point is settled, then?” 

“Yes, last night. At first I was going to be 
a philosopher because my father is one, and 
then last year, when I wrote ‘The Two 
Sieges,’ I wanted to be an historian. But now 
I’ve decided to be an editor.”; 


22 


THE BOY EDITOR 


A gleam came into John Dorrel’s eyes; so 
one of his little plans was working, and Alan 
Campbell was already making himself felt ! 

“And your grandfather,” commented John 
Dorrel absently, “is a farmer.” 

“Last summer, Mr. Dorrel,” said Spencer 
apologetically, “I came to think that there’s 
something in farming. It’s not, of course, 
what any ambitious young man would 
choose.” 

“And you,” reflected John Dorrel, “are an 
ambitious young man.” 

“I am, Mr. Dorrel! This year and every 
year of my life I mean to make just as much 
of myself as I possibly can.” 

“What do you propose to be up to es- 
pecially, this year?” 

“In addition to my school studies, — they 
are going all right, Mr. Dorrel?” Spencer 
interrupted himself anxiously; for ever since 
in the year of his janitorship the Profes- 
sor had given him a much-needed lesson in 
window-washing, the boy had shared the 


THE PROBLEM 


23 

consciousness of every pupil of Mapleton 
Academy that it was perfectly possible for a 
good deal to be the matter with you in Pro- 
fessor Dorrel’s opinion while you were quite 
unaware. 

‘‘You are all right at books, Spencer.’’ 

Reassured, Spencer continued, glowing, 
“I have a good deal of time left from my 
school studies, and at Mr. Campbell’s sug- 
gestion I am going to devote it to a long 
essay, a monograph is the word, I believe, on 
the subject of editorial responsibility. I have 
had access to a number of old newspapers at 
my grandfather’s, and Mr. Campbell sug- 
gests that such a — a theoretic study and 
research would be excellent preparation for 
my life work.” 

“Mr. Campbell said that?” The tone was 
startled. The suggestion did not sound like 
Alan Campbell. What mischief was that 
wise Scotchman up to now, thought John 
Dorrel. 

“Yes, Mr. Campbell advises it. And he 


24 


THE BOY EDITOR 


even thinks that perhaps some day I can 
publish the — the monograph !” 

Worse and worse; this really was too bad 
on the part of his editor friend; but John 
Dorrel had to smile, for sometimes his little 
plans worked altogether too well! 

“ Wh}^ be in such a hurry about publishing, 
Spencer ? You ’re — let me see — eighteen ? ” 

“Mr. Dorrel, can any one be in too much 
of a hurry about a life work? I think one 
ought to set a goal before one, and then 
devote one’s self to reaching it!” 

“Ever think of glancing round at the 
landscape while you’re running, Spencer? 
Or nodding ‘how-do-you-do’ to the friends 
along the track?” 

“Friends?” queried Spencer blankly; “I 
do not see, Mr. Dorrel, how you can have 
time for friends if you are preparing yourself 
earnestly for a life work; a work, it seems to 
me, as I begin to have ideas for my mono- 
graph, of public service. I really was not 
planning to have any friends, not yet, Mr. 


THE PROBLEM 


25 

Dorrel. This seems to me such a very impor- 
tant year for self-preparation/’ 

"‘It is an important year,” John Dorrel 
slowly agreed. “Lots of people in the High 
Room seem to be feeling that way about it. 
There are a good many important matters 
buzzing about in the air, too. What's your 
opinion now, Spencer, of this affair of New 
School Building versus Town Hall?” 

“About what, Mr. Dorrel?” 

“There's a good deal of discussion rife in 
the town as to whether Mapleton shall build 
a new school or a town hall.” 

“What's your opinion, Mr. Dorrel?” 
asked Spencer quickly. 

“What's yours, Spencer?” 

“I never heard of the question before. I 
should want to think it over pretty hard.” 

“ Suppose you do think it over, when you 
have time from your monograph.” 

“Mr. Dorrel,” said Spencer suddenly, “the 
reason I want to publish a monograph is 
that perhaps my grandfather would read it. 


26 THE BOY EDITOR 

Perhaps he’d think I amounted to some- 
thing.” 

“Your ‘ Two Sieges’ was printed.” 

“My grandfather did n’t read it. He has 
never mentioned it.” 

There was something in the tenseness of 
the boy’s lips that caused the schoolmaster 
to change the subject quickly. 

“Another thing that’s agitating the High 
Room in this important year is the coming 
election.” 

“Election?” 

“The election of an Editor-in-Chief for the 
Mentor.” 

“The Mentor?” 

“The school paper.” 

“Oh,” said Spencer, politely indifferent. 

“I am glad to say that I think the election 
is pretty sure for Jeanie Campbell.” The 
Professor spoke to himself as much as to 
Spencer, with the teacher’s relief at having 
one concern of this critical last year in the 
High Room in safe hands, “Jeanie knows 


THE PROBLEM 


a? 


almost as much about editing a paper as her 
father do^s. Have you ever noticed Jeanie, 
Spencer?’’ 

'‘1 know there’s a girl there, at the Camp- 
bells’; but no, I’ve never noticed her partic- 
ularly.” 


CHAPTER II 


THE ELECTION 

The Campbell sitting-room of an evening 
was a ruddy, comfortable spot. It had in the 
centre a roomy table with no fussy, feminine 
cover to hump itself up or to slide away be- 
neath the shoving-about of papers or books 
or studious elbows. It had a merry pine-knot 
fire on these crisp fall evenings. It had wide 
windows without any curtains to make a man 
or boy impatient. It had bookcases to the 
ceiling and chairs that were meant to sit in. 
It had always a pleasant orderliness, as of 
two lads who had discovered that order was a 
more comfortable thing to live with than 
mess. The Campbell sitting-room had not 
one touch of femininity except Jeanie Camp- 
bell herself, but in the matter of downright 
“homeyness” Jeanie was enough! 

In the middle of the table a green-shaded 


THE ELECTION 


29 


lamp cast light on one’s reading, but left the 
rest of the room to be illumined by the leap- 
ing fire. It was an easy matter for Alan 
Campbell to shove his chair back out of the 
circle of the lamp into the fitful firelit shadow, 
whence he could regard two young people 
quite as interesting to peruse at times as was 
Thomas Carlyle ! One of these young people 
would from time to time forget Alan Camp- 
bell’s presence, but Jeanie knew her father 
far too well ever to forget that he was there, 
bending the intentness of two caustic blue 
eyes on Spencer Briggs’s spectacled face. 

Now when a boarder is paying exactly two 
dollars a week for three hearty Pennsylvania 
meals a day, he is not always accorded in 
addition the privileges of the family sitting- 
room; but Jeanie Campbell knew that Spen- 
cer Briggs was a human boy, although he 
did n’t, and she had not needed more than 
the hint of an open door to prove to the un- 
conscious Spencer that the Campbell sitting- 
room was better equipped for evening study 


30 


THE BOY EDITOR 


than the chilly, ill-lighted school office. 
Spencer found a broad stretch of table before 
him, an excellent chair beneath him, and 
spent every evening at the Campbells’ with- 
out a thought that any young feminine prov- 
idence had thus ordained. Oh, there was 
enough happening on any evening in his own 
sitting-room to set Alan Campbell’s lips 
twitching beneath his ragged, sandy mus- 
tache! To-night, however, the observant 
eyes were a bit more alert than usual, for the 
father surmised from the heightened bright- 
ness of her eyes and cheeks that his ‘‘son” 
had something special up her sleeve. There 
was a curious persistency, too, in the way 
Jeanie sought to break in upon Spencer’s 
monologue, whereas she was usually his 
meekest listener, never betraying the amused 
observation tucked away under her eyelids. 

Alan Campbell wondered what John Dor- 
rel had been up to in sending this boy to 
board with them. Had the schoolmaster’s 
little plan, whatever it was, been for the boy’s 


THE ELECTION 


31 


sake or the girl’s sake ? A suppressed laugh 
quivered in Alan Campbell’s throat, for he 
was seriously considering trying a little plan 
of his own. From the looks of her, Jeanie, 
too, had her project. But whatever little 
plans anybody might have, her father was 
sure of one thing, the boy had never so much 
as seen the girl! And that was pretty dull of 
him, to be sure. How could he help seeing 
the pure pink and white of her face, the clear 
gray glow of her eyes, the gleam of live gold 
beneath the lamp ? Yet perhaps a boy did n’t 
notice a girl who did n’t dress up. Now that 
he thought about it, Alan Campbell believed 
most girls did something more to their hair 
than Jeanie did, something more than catch 
the tangle back with a tight little bow at the 
neck. Jeanie never varied her uniform of 
immaculate, ill-fitting shirtwaist, and skirt 
obstinately short enough to allow freedom to 
the stride that matched her father’s. Fathers 
of motherless girls have their moments of 
puzzlement; perhaps it was time Jeanie be- 


32 


THE BOY EDITOR 


gan to dress up a little. Then the keen blue 
eyes grew very soft at the thought that if the 
boy did not see the girl, Jeanie was not one to 
care whether any one saw her or not; she 
never thought about herself long enough for 
that! 

Spencer’s voice rolled out pleasantly 
through the firelit room. He was untying a 
fresh packet of yellowed newspapers. 

‘Ht is a glorious thing to be an editor in 
war-times 1 A position of such responsibility, 
such power! The power to turn a whole 
nation toward the right in a national crisis! 
Not that an editorial position is not always 
full of responsibility, in peace as well as war ! ” 

‘‘Yes,” said Jeanie, “even the editorship 
of the Mentor is full of responsibility.” 

Spencer was opening out the papers each 
at the editorial page. He was intent upon the 
printed columns, and the pencil in his right 
hand felt about vaguely for a pad upon which 
to make jottings. Jeanie slipped one in place 
beneath the fingers, and the pencil drove 


THE ELECTION 


33 


away furiously in the strong, rapid strokes of 
a strong, rapid brain. 

‘‘Don’t you,” persisted Jeanie, “think the 
editorship of the Mentor is a position of 
glorious responsibility.?” 

Spencer’s spectacles turned about on her, 
vaguely disturbed. “Mentor?” 

“The school paper, the Mapleton 
Mentor.” j 

“Oh,” Spencer smiled in frank amuse- 
ment, “I was speaking of real editorship, of 
man’s work.” 

“I guess you’d think the Mentor was real 
editorship,” flashed Jeanie, “if you tried it!” 

Spencer turned back to his papers. This 
girl at the Campbells’ had never disturbed 
his evening study before I But now she kept 
at it. “Don’t you suppose you’d think it was 
real editorship if you tried it?” 

Spencer had returned to the year 1863. 
His instinct was to brush Jeanie’s remarks 
aside like the buzzing of a mosquito. Eyes 
on his editorials, he murmured, seeking to 


34 


THE BOY EDITOR 


silence her, Hardly what a man would call a 
man’s work!” He smiled in polite tolerance; 
then, recalling something Mr. Dorrel had 
said, ""A schoolgirl’s work, perhaps, editing 
the Mentor. But the subject. Miss Campbell, 
which your father has suggested for my 
researches, and my preparation for my pro- 
fession, have nothing to do with school 
papers.” 

‘‘ But could n’t it ? ” cried Jeanie ; ‘‘ could n’t 
the editing of a school paper be good pre- 
paration for editing a real one ? Father, don’t 
you yourself think so?” 

Both young faces turned around to the 
silent observer in the shadow. 

‘‘Every man must find his own way of 
preparing himself for his profession,” said 
Alan Campbell. 

“You did n’t prepare yourself for yours, 
father, by studying a lot of stale old papers !” 
Jeanie’s eyes flashed reproach at a father who 
should have supported her in argument! 
“You did n’t study papers, you studied 


THE ELECTION 


35 

people, so as to know how to write for 
them!’’ 

The Campbell girl was distinctly annoying 
this evening! Spencer strove to forget her in 
concentrated study. Again his right hand 
felt about vaguely on the table. 

‘‘Your eraser,” murmured Jeanie, supply- 
ing it. She bowed her bright little head and 
peered up at the lamp-flame, then turned it 
higher, and pushed the lamp nearer to 
Spencer’s eyes. 

Spencer was already far away, and too 
much absorbed to bear any grudge against 
Jeanie for her unprecedented conversational 
interruptions, so that he burst forth pres- 
ently, — 

“Oh, an editor could even be a soldier in 
those days, he could fight for causes!” 

The mosquito-like remarks began again, 
whereas Spencer Briggs wanted an audience, 
not an answer! “So could the editor of the 
Mentor fight for causes!” persisted Jeanie. 

“What cause smiled Spencer. 


THE BOY EDITOR 


36 

"‘The new Academy building! That’s a 
splendid cause!” 

“I was speaking of real causes, great 
causes.” 

“So am I!” flamed Jeanie. “Isn’t the 
cause of education always a great cause?” 

Spencer returned to his work. 

“And I’m sure Mr. Dorrel thinks so!” 
cried Jeanie. 

This time Spencer was unexpectedly alert. 
“You’re sure Mr. Dorrel wants a new school 
building?” 

“Yes! But that was n’t all that I meant. 
I’m sure Mr. Dorrel thinks that the Maple- 
ton Mentor is a splendid opportunity, a 
splendid opportunity — for anybody — to 
have an education in people.” 

Spencer Briggs was an unexpected young 
gentleman. Sometimes he was unexpectedly 
cordial. At such moments the pleasantest of 
smiles would flash across his absent-minded 
face, — a smile gone again in a twinkling. 

“I am glad,” he said, “that you are to be 


THE ELECTION 


37 


editor of the Mentor if you think so highly of 
the position/’ 

‘‘But I have not been elected/’ 

“Mr. Dorrel says you’re going to be.” 

“He’s right, isn’t he, Jeanie?” came her 
father’s voice, full of pride and full of teasing. 

But Jeanie was plainly flushed and embar- 
rassed. “Nobody can count on an election 
beforehand,” she said, springing up from her 
chair suddenly, and hurrying from the room. 

She came back in a few minutes to set 
a large plate of cookies near Spencer’s left 
hand. His happy munching lips expressed no 
gratitude, however, as Jeanie and her father 
presently withdrew, leaving Spencer in full 
possession of their midnight oil. 

Five minutes later found them both in 
their before-bed custom, swinging their heels, 
seated on the stationary tubs in the kitchen, 
each munching an apple, silently, side by 
side. Alan Campbell peered around at his 
daughter with a twinkle, — “Cross at your 
old daddy about anything, Jeanie?” 


THE BOY EDITOR 


38 

Jeanie was a little cross at him, but 
her twinkle conquered, answering his, “Not 
cross at you if you’ll help him, father.” 

“Help.? How?” 

Jeanie looked up at him, letting him read 
her thoughts. “Don’t you think he’d be 
a good one — some day, perhaps — on a 
paper?” 

Alan Campbell drew a long whistle. 
“You’re a cool one, laddie! So I’m to take 
him on my paper some day, am I ? ” Another 
whistle. “He’ll have to learn two or three 
things first, two or three I And one of them is, 
— but only one of them, mind, for there are 
more! — ” here Alan Campbell looked into 
the face that Spencer Briggs had not yet so 
much as seen, that face so pink and white, so 
wide-eyed and sweet, — “one of the things 
that young man will have to learn is how to 
say ^ thank you’!” 

A father can perhaps afford to be a little 
devious and doubtful when a daughter thus 
frankly endeavors to engage him to offer a 


THE ELECTION 


39 


seat in his editorial office to a callow youth 
from nowhere, but Hiram Scott was not 
Jeanie’s father and he knew well enough that 
it behoved him to mind his manners when 
Jeanie fell upon him with a breathless and 
staggering project. The two had appropri- 
ated to themselves the afternoon privacy of 
the deserted Eighth Grade classroom. Hiram 
was swinging his long legs from a window- 
seat, while Jeanie sat on a desk hacked by 
two generations of jack-knives, her feet on 
the chair, and her hands clasping her knees 
tensely. There had come a pregnant pause 
during which Hiram looked out of the win- 
dow and toyed with the cord of the torn 
window-shade. Jeanie was watching him 
with anxious but determined eyes. So far as 
in him lay, calm, impartial, and humorously 
observant as he was, Hiram Scott was feeling 
a little resentful. He did not see that the boy 
under discussion justified Jeanie’s lively 
interest. Hiram and Jeanie had been chums 
ever since the day when Alan Campbell had 


40 


THE BOY EDITOR 


disembarked upon the platform of the Maple- 
ton station, bearing in one hand a battered 
‘‘Sartor Resartus’’ and leading by the other a 
little red-ringleted tomboy of a girl. This new 
boy had been on the scene exactly one year, 
and he had come from a vague and doubtful 
region known as the City. Nor was Hiram’s 
doubt of Jeanie’s scheme by any means alto- 
gether personal. Ever since, two years before, 
they had entered the High Room, Hiram 
Scott and Jeanie Campbell had been the means 
employed by Professor Dorrelwhen he wished 
to leaven the whole lump of his high school. 
What he could n’t manage himself, he set 
Hiram and Jeanie to managing for him. The 
schoolmaster’s reliance on them was a respon- 
sibility; Hiram Scott did not believe in sacri- 
ficing the whole school, as it might possibly 
turn out, to one boy, and Hiram had said this 
to Jeanie just before the pregnant pause in 
which they both now sat suspended. But what 
was a fellow to do when J eanie looked like that, 
all one flame of energy and determination? 


THE ELECTION 


41 


^‘Mr. Dorrel himself thinks it’s a splendid 
opportunity/’ cried Jeanie, “to learn a lot of 
things a person needs to learn who’s going to 
be somebody in the world.” 

“Who’s going to be somebody in the 
world?” 

“Spencer Briggs! It’s in him, if we all 
help, this way.” 

Hiram spoke with the impartial calm of the 
observant. “I don’t believe it’s in anybody 
to be somebody in the world if he does n’t 
begin by having eyes in his head. Spencer’s 
got it bad, J. ; Spencer ’s got far-sightedness so 
bad that he can’t see anything but H. Spen- 
cer Briggs and his future.” 

“This would help him,” pleaded Jeanie ; “I 
know it will work out all right. I tell you, 
Hiram,” she repeated, “Mr. Dorrel himself 
says it’s a splendid opportunity.” 

“The Prof says he wants Spencer Briggs to 
have this opportunity?” demanded Hiram in 
astonishment. 

“Well, no, he did n’t say that exactly, and 


42 


THE BOY EDITOR 


you need n’t tell him anything about all this 
quite yet, either; but / want Spencer Briggs 
to have this opportunity, and I ’m going to 
bring it about, too! You know, Hiram,” her 
voice was at once commanding and cajoling, 

there are four days ; we can do a lot of talk- 
ing in four days. You know we can make the 
rest do it if we try, you and I, together.” 

‘Hfwetry!” 

“ Hiram, you ’re going to ? ” 

No answer. 

‘'Hiram, I thought you liked him.” 

“ Do like him ! So does the whole school!” 

“And you know how clever he is!” 

“ He has a head and a half, I grant you that ! 
There is n’t anything against him for any job 
except that he’s deaf and dumb and blind!” 

“ But he need n’t be if we give him this 
chance ! Don’t you see, Hiram, how he needs 
the job?” 

“ But the job does n’t need him, and so it’s 
not fair to the job; that’s what I’m kicking 
about.” 


THE ELECTION 


43 


“You leave that part to me, Hiram Scott !” 

Hiram looked down at her in wide-eyed 
and frank amusement. 

“Look here, J., don’t you try to run the 
whole earth. You know perfectly well what 
happens when it does n’t run the way you 
tell it to.” 

If you were a human boy and in the right 
of an argument, you could n’t help a little 
relishing the sight when Jeanie Campbell 
visibly swallowed her temper! She did it 
now, then demanded on a choke, — 

“Are you going to run the way I tell you 
to, Hiram Scott?” 

Hiram swung himself down, indicating the 
conclusion of the interview. “Sure, J., I am! 
I’ll help you. I ’ll talk up your scheme. But 
do you want to know why? Just to prove to 
you that it won’t work!” 

During the four days that followed. Profes- 
sor Dorrel observed among the usual prelec- 
tion groups of talkers nothing to make him 
alter his optimistic conviction that the pres- 


44 


THE BOY EDITOR 


ent Third Year in the High Room was setting 
off remarkably well. He never allowed him- 
self to be too early confident, yet this year 
several little plans were surely making pro- 
mising progress. On this very afternoon he 
observed a cheering and suggestive little 
incident. At four o’clock the schoolmaster, 
gathering together his books and himself pre- 
paratory to leaving the High Room in com- 
plete possession of the important business of 
the day, had observed that on the announce- 
ment of the editorial election, Spencer Briggs 
had risen and with book-strap under his arm 
was making his way toward the door. Now 
Jeanie Campbell occupied the last seat before 
the exit. Spencer Briggs did not attain the 
door. He did not get past Jeanie’s seat. The 
schoolmaster could not see exactly what hap- 
pened, but he did see a confused and crest- 
fallen Spencer turn about and march back to 
his desk near the platform, and there re-seat 
himself in visible annoyance and bewilder- 
ment. 


THE ELECTION 


45 


John Dorrel wondered why Jeanie, sitting 
very tense and alert, did not look at him as 
he strode his way out, for he had a merry 
twinkle of appreciation ready for her. As he 
tramped downstairs to his office, and after- 
wards, as he set himself to the afternoon 
tasks on his table there, the happy thoughts 
in his head mingled pleasantly with the 
papers he was looking over; for Jeanie Camp- 
bell was always a comfort and reliance, and 
Jeanie this year had in her charge two mat- 
ters of serious concern to the schoolmaster, 
namely, the Mentor and H. Spencer Briggs! 

Three quarters of an hour later. Professor 
Dorrel was still smiling, but not now at the 
way his little plans were working; he was 
smiling at the way they were not working! 
He was smiling also at Hiram Scott, on whose 
face he saw his own rueful amusement 
reflected. 

^Ht’s Jeanie’s doing, all of it.” Hiram once 
again explained the events of the last half- 
hour. 


46 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘Did n’t you help, Hiram?” 

“No choice, when Jeanie wants a thing. 
But, Mr. Dorrel, had you never said any- 
thing to Jeanie, something that put the idea 
into her head?” 

“If I did, I never meant to.” 

“Did n’t you talk to her about the Mentor 
and about Spencer Briggs?” 

“Yes! But not in combination!” 

“Guess Jeanie thought of the combina- 
tion! I wish her joy of it! and Spencer joy 
of it, too!” 

“ Spencer ? It will be something of an edu- 
cation for Spencer!” 

“Rather!” Hiram smiled; “Jeanie is 
Assistant. It will be an education for Spencer 
Briggs if he ever tries to do anything Jeanie 
Campbell does n’t want him to, or not to do 
what she does want him to!” 

John Dorrel laughed. “That something 
you’ve had experience of yourself, Hiram?” 

Hiram chuckled. “Not I! I’ve known 
better than ever to try it!” 


THE ELECTION 


47 


Poor old Mentor ! ” sighed John Dorrel. 

“Jeanie is Assistant Editor, so I’m not 
worrying about the Mentor too much.” 

“About Spencer, then?” 

“No; about Jeanie. It’s going to be a 
bigger education for Jeanie than for Spencer. 
Jeanie will take care of the Mentor all right, 
but she’ll find it harder to help Spencer 
Briggs be an editor than I found it to help 
him be a janitor!” 

Whatever John Dorrel’s disappointed sur- 
prise at the failure of his plan for the editor- 
ship of his school paper, it was certainly to 
no one’s astonishment so much as to his own 
that Herbert Spencer Briggs found himself 
Editor-in-Chief of the Mapleton Mentor. 


CHAPTER III 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

You can leam a good deal about a person 
in two months. Jeanie Campbell had learned, 
and was still learning. As time went on, how- 
ever, and as editorship went on, her study 
of Spencer Briggs was narrowing itself to a 
single question: Why had he accepted his 
election? Why had he accepted it, if — 

The time was the middle of November, the 
scene was the evening sitting-room. The fire 
was snapping merrily. Two young people 
sat at the table elbow-deep in papers. Each 
was busy with editorials; only Spencer’s 
editorials belonged to the year i860 and 
Jeanie’s to the year 1910. 

Spencer Briggs, as well as Jeanie, had 
learned some things in two months. He had 
learned not to be astonished when Hiram 
Scott or Sam Klein or Patrick Murphy or 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


49 


Raymond Ellis or some other boy asked to 
accompany him on his after-school tramp. 
On these occasions Spencer would acquiesce 
in the suggestion, first with a bewildered 
stare, next with a sudden and bewildering 
smile, and then would promptly forget it 
altogether, trudging along for an hour either 
of fluent monologue on matters remote from 
Mapleton, or of silence equally remote. Still 
he gradually came to learn the faces and the 
names of these companions of his walks. 
Another thing he had learned was to consult 
Jeanie. The Campbell girl had proved so 
convenient that Spencer consulted her about 
many things ; whether if you had fifty cents 
to spend on a cap, you could do better at 
Wright’s or at Maloney’s ; what in the world 
his mother would like for a birthday present; 
did Jeanie think JEntas was a finer type of 
hero than Ulysses ; but that on which Spencer 
chiefly consulted Jeanie was his monograph. 
Still another thing Spencer Briggs had 
learned was that on the two occasions when 


THE BOY EDITOR 


50 

in his capacity of Editor-in-Chief of the 
Mapleton Mentor it had been necessary for 
him to address the High Room as a body, it 
had given him a very curious feeling to ob- 
serve that blur of faces resolve itself into one 
composite face, all burning eyes and taut 
attention, listening, listening to him! Yet 
whatever his relation to his afternoon com- 
panions, to Jeanie, to her father, to those 
merging faces of an audience, Spencer Briggs 
would never have thought of calling that 
relation by the name of any such frivolous 
distraction as friendship ; neither would any 
of those others have thought of calling it that 
either, and for the best of reasons I 
Through all these wintry evenings the 
monograph and the Mentor divided the at- 
tention of the Campbell sitting-room. Alan 
Campbell gave his advice to the monograph 
and his observation to the Mentor. On this 
particular evening Spencer announced to the 
room, beaming, "‘IVe just finished the first 
division of my Editorial Responsibility; the 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


51 

negative aspect, you remember, Mr. Camp- 
bell? This division of the subject proves the 
dangers and difficulties if an editor does not 
supervise and direct every department of his 
paper, have personal knowledge of its minut- 
est workings, impress his personality on the 
entire paper from the weather report to the 
smallest advertisement.’" 

‘‘A little risky to impress his personality 
too much on the weather report,” murmured 
Alan Campbell to a winking ember. 

‘T mean, Mr. Campbell, the principle! 
The principle is that whatever an editor is 
forced to delegate to an assistant, he should 
direct 1 He should have knowledge of every- 
thing. He should be on all departments of his 
paper himself. That’s my idea of an editor’s 
public service.” 

Jeanie looked up, showing eyes wide with 
that question she could not answer, then her 
cheeks flushed and her lids dropped at catch- 
ing the dancing light in her father’s gaze at 
her, as he said : — 


52 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Exactly right, Spencer, I’m glad you 
preach that principle.” 

“Spencer,” said a frankly weary voice 
from the Mentor end of the table, “if you 
have finished your first division, can you 
help me with this proof? It’s an awful 
mess.” 

Spencer glanced at the clock. “I can give 
you exactly fifteen minutes, from nine- 
forty-five to ten.” 

“Father,” grumbled Jeanie, “that new 
man you’ve got for the job printing is no 
good at all. He can’t spell anything. He’s 
got every proper noun wrong in the ‘Letter 
from a Traveling Kitten.’ Just look at this 
galley, Spencer!” 

“‘Letter from a Traveling Kitten’!” 
exploded Spencer; “what in the world is 
that?” 

“It’s the leading feature for the Primary 
Department. The Primaries never had any- 
thing special before. The kitten writes from 
all the places they study in their geography, 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


53 

and that kitten has brought in thirty new 
subscriptions.” 

‘‘The Primary,” said Spencer lightly; 
“oh, that’s your department.” 

“It’s one of my departments, yes!” 

The week preceding the monthly issue of 
the Mentor was apt to be a trying one for 
Spencer, and he did not now intend that 
Jeanie should encroach upon his time before 
nine-forty-five. He relaxed into an absorbed 
silence, broken in upon by a bubbling little 
laugh from Jeanie, as she read manuscript. 
“Oh, this is good! This chapter is really 
good ! I wonder who did it ! I wonder what’s 
going to happen next at Slattery’s!” 

Spencer was unresponsive, but Alan Camp- 
bell answered, “ By the way, whose idea was 
it, that notion for a serial in competitive 
chapters, and anonymous?” 

Jeanie looked over at her father’s keen 
eyes in visible reluctance. “I — I — guess 
it was my idea, but Spencer thinks it’s all 
right, don’t you, Spencer?” 


54 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘^What?’’ 

‘‘The serial ‘What Happened at Slat- 
tery’s ’ ! You know about that, our scheme for 
having competitive chapters come in each 
time, unsigned, and choosing the best for 
publication. Ten people tried this time. 
Did n’t you read the manuscripts, Spencer? 
I left them in your desk at school for three 
days.” 

“Must have forgotten them. Fiction is 
your department.” 

“I am beginning to appreciate the scope 
of Jeanie’s departments,” remarked Alan 
Campbell. 

“But father, father,” cried Jeanie hastily, 
“the whole paper is Spencer’s really. And he 
writes the first editorial. Have you got it 
done, Spencer? Everything else is in proof. 
What is the subject of your editorial this 
month, Spencer?” 

“I thought I could rearrange a few para- 
graphs from my monograph, calling the edi- 
torial ‘The Editor in Peace and in War.’ ” 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


55 

“Oh/’ sighed Jeanie, “I thought perhaps 
you would write something a little nearer 
home this time.” 

“I could n’t. I’ve been finishing the first 
division of Editorial Responsibility!” Spen- 
cer excused himself with emphasis and irri- 
tation. 

“May I be allowed to read it?” suggested 
Alan Campbell with ready interest. 

Shining-eyed Spencer pressed a pile of 
fluent foolscap into the outstretched hand. 
In the last two months Spencer Briggs had 
added to the list of the three men he admired 
a fourth, — Alan Campbell. Clearly Alan 
Campbell, like John Dorrel, and like some 
one else Spencer knew, had chosen to be a 
big man in a little place. Also the Mapleton 
Chronicle was a big paper in a little place, 
and made its courier flights over all the State, 
and had even been quoted in New York, and 
thus quoted had even been read by Spencer’s 
own philosopher father. The discovery that 
his father had read Alan Campbell would 


THE BOY EDITOR 


56 

have been enough to win Spencer’s respect, 
but it was not so important as the discovery 
that Alan Campbell had read his father, 
every one of the six books ! Few things could 
have flattered Spencer Briggs more than 
Alan Campbell’s interest in the monograph, 
but Jeanie eyed this interest with equal 
doubt and hope. You could never be sure 
what such a sharp-eyed father was up to! 
But anyway it was a very remarkable mono- 
graph and a very remarkable boy who was 
writing it; any father with any eyes at all 
would have to acknowledge that! 

The circle in the Campbell sitting-room 
was frequently, as now, increased by one 
who entered with quick, quiet step, and 
unannounced, in good neighborly Mapleton 
custom. Hiram Scott pushed a third chair 
to the green-lighted table and began to dis- 
gorge important matters from his vest 
pockets, snapping off rubber bands and 
methodically arranging his papers. He 
glanced at Jeanie’s end of the table and 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


57 

unobtrusively appropriated a pile of proof, 
running an accurate blue pencil along it, 
without any interruption to conversation. 
The correcting of proof was not, strictly 
speaking, the work of the business manager 
of the Mapleton Mentor, but, for a boy not 
in the least officious in disposition, Hiram 
Scott always did manage to attend to a good 
deal of business not, strictly speaking, his 
own. Tired Jeanie’s animation returned at 
sight of Hiram, for he had come about 
weighty concerns. But did the Editor-in- 
Chief even remember what these were? for 
he was giving indications of retreat to the 
privacy of the school office ! Hiram, reading, 
laid down his proof-sheet, for a low laugh, 
“These are good, these ‘Rhymes by our 
Reporters’! Who’s doing them?” 

“ Patrick Murphy does some. I ’ve done a 
few myself.” Jeanie acknowledged the latter 
fact reluctantly. 

“I found Mr. Dorrel himself chuckling 
over them the other day. I say, friends and 


THE BOY EDITOR 


58 

fellow-editors, the Prof’s mighty pleased 
with the Mentor this year; he told me so.” 

‘Hs he?” breathed Jeanie; “that’s good, 
is n’t it, Spencer?” 

“Is he?” echoed Spencer, alert with 
pleasure; “I — I hope to make a good thing 
of it, a little later on, when I’ve a little more 
time from my monograph.” 

“He’s specially pleased with the ‘Visitors 
from the Past’ series; he’s glad to have the 
work in the English class coming out that 
way, and he says he really believes Chaucer 
would have written just such a letter about 
it if he’d visited Mapleton Academy.” 

“Whose idea, Jeanie,” said Alan Camp- 
bell’s voice from the shadow, “that ‘Visitors 
from the Past’ series?” 

Jeanie was on her guard before two now! 
“Spencer wrote the Addison one,” she 
answered evasively. 

“But it’s not only the Prof who’s pleased 
with the Mentor. We’re spreading out far 
beyond the school. I’ve calculated that the 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


59 

answers to Old Fogy’s "Back to-the-Farm’ 
letters in the Chronicle have brought us in 
sixty-seven subscriptions. I wonder who 
Old Fogy is, anyway.” 

‘"I don’t myself know who he is,” said the 
editor of the Chronicle. ""The letters come 
to me signed only in that way. My own idea 
is that the author is no Old Fogy at all, nor 
even a farmer himself. He knows too much 
about writing to be either.” 

""Keep up your "Out-into-the-World’ 
column, Spencer!” cried Hiram; ""it’s bring- 
ing in a lot of money. The Vote of Approval 
will carry with it solid cash this year, when 
May comes.” 

""I never think of the Vote of Approval,” 
replied Spencer haughtily. 

""Well, I do!” exclaimed Jeanie; ""and I 
think you might, Spencer, for the Vote of 
Approval means more than money!” 

"" It will mean more than money this year,” 
murmured Alan Campbell, with a meaning 
of his own. 


6o 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘Yes, the Vote of Approval will mean a 
good deal this year,’’ echoed Hiram Scott, 
also with a meaning of his own. 

But Spencer Briggs was thinking of some- 
thing else, and that, for once, not his mono- 
graph. He was grave and intent. 

“I think Old Fogy’s ‘Back-to-the-Farm’ 
arguments are pretty hard to answer,” he 
said. 

Jeanie’s temper could not help flashing 
testily. “ I don’t see that you ’ve ever tried to 
answer them !” Then the overworked Assist- 
ant Editor could have bitten her quick 
tongue, for she caught the gleaming humor of 
Hiram Scott’s eyes meeting her father’s. 

“On the contrary, I’ve been trying to 
answer them, in my mind, ever since last 
summer.” 

With sudden penetration and anxiety 
Jeanie exclaimed, “You don’t mean to say, 
Spencer Briggs, that any clever boy, with all 
sorts of chances open to him, would want to 
go back to a farm, — want to!” 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 6i 


‘‘Would the farm want him is the question 
I Ve been trying to answer!” 

There was in Spencer’s face a manly dig- 
nity and intentness that momentarily caught 
Hiram’s attention as he said, continuing their 
causes for self-congratulation, “But where 
the Mentor is taking the whole school and 
town by storm is in its second editorials; 
they’re lively enough to jump off the page, 
and they’re waking the whole place up, and 
they’ll get us our new school building if any- 
thing will. You ought to hear the buzz at the 
post-office ! Town Hall versus School, School 
versus Town Hall, everybody’s talking, and 
when the debate comes off — I tell you, 
Spencer,” Hiram’s eyes grew alive with mis- 
chief, — “your new academy campaign is 
stirring the whole town! Mapleton always 
did pay a good deal of attention to what goes 
on at school, but now! everybody’s reading 
you now, and when at the debate everybody 
hears you talk, why, our new school is a sure 
thing!” 


62 THE BOY EDITOR 

donT write those editorials/’ said 
Spencer. 

‘‘Whose idea, by the way, that debate 
between the representatives of the town and 
the school. Town Hall versus New Acad- 
emy?” Alan Campbell made the inquiry of 
the fire ; but got no answer from his daughter, 
who, again evasive, said, “Spencer’s going to 
write the new academy articles as soon as he 
gets time. And he’s going to lead the debate 
on our side. We’re going to have it in Jan- 
uary, just when things are usually dull at 
school. We’re going to be lively in our mid- 
winter numbers ; and as for the debate, if that 
does n’t once and for all make people stop 
talking town hall for this town before we’ve 
got a decent school building! We’ve got six 
weeks to work up the debate, and we’re 
working!” 

“ Do you really think the town needs a new 
school more than a new town hall?” It was 
Spencer’s quiet question. 

“Do you mean,” flamed Jeanie, “that you 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 63 

don’t believe it does? After all we’ve done 
and said and written ! And when — when” — 
she caught her breath in the intensity of her 
excitement — "‘when the whole thing is 
making the Mentor so popular and bringing 
in so many subscriptions!” 

“Is that what we’re doing it all for,” 
inquired Spencer blankly, “for subscrip- 
tions?” 

“Oh, no, no!” exclaimed Jeanie, “of 
course not. We’re trying to get a new school 
because we need a new school ! ” 

“Do you think we need a new school?” 
Spencer looked to Hiram; “why?” 

Hiram looked steadily into Spencer’s 
steady, questioning eyes, as men look. They 
had both forgotten Jeanie. 

“Yes, I think we need a new school 
building, because of Mr. Dorrel. Mr. Dorrel 
has made a school for Mapleton. I think the 
least Mapleton can do for him is to make a 
building for it.” 

“I think,” said Jeanie, that, whether we 


THE BOY EDITOR 


64 

get it or not, our working for a new school- 
house is our way of showing Mr. Dorrel that 
we care for the things he cares for.’’ 

“Yes,” agreed Spencer quietly, “one 
would like to show him that.” 

Seeing Hiram firmly established at the 
table for a long evening of Mentor business, 
Spencer presently gathered together his notes 
and papers, and withdrew to the less social 
school office, having completely forgotten 
that little promise about the proof. But 
Jeanie had not forgotten, and the fact tended 
to make her all the more sharply on the de- 
fensive with the two keen gentlemen with 
whom she was now left alone. Hiram glanced 
from the pile of Mentor matters on the table 
before them toward the door whence the 
Editor-in-Chief had disappeared. Only his 
eyes dared to say, “I told you so,” but that 
look was enough to make Jeanie flame out, 

“You said my scheme would n’t work, 
Hiram Scott! But see how successful the 
Mentor is. Is n’t my scheme working 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 65 

^'You are working. Is your scheme 
working?’’ 

‘‘You wait for the debate, Hiram Scott. 
You know how well Spencer can speak; 
you’ve heard him. You just wait for the 
debate; you’ll believe he’s worth something 
then, you and the whole school! Wait!” 

“We are waiting,” said Hiram quietly. 

“And, father,” Jeanie besought, looking 
toward the monograph sheets in her father’s 
hands, “can’t you see how Spencer can write ? 
Well enough for a really truly editor. Don’t 
you see that he can?” 

Alan Campbell, rising now to seek his 
evening apple in the kitchen, raised his hand 
in passing to twitch a curl of Jeanie’s tied- 
back tangle, then dropped his arm in sur- 
prise, for the tangle was no longer there ! It 
was done up in a young-lady-like mass on 
Jeanie’s head ! In response to her appeal to 
him, Jeanie’s father merely echoed quizzi- 
cally Hiram’s words, “I am waiting.” 

Thus when you’ve undertaken to make an 


66 


THE BOY EDITOR 


editor of a boy, you stick up for him ; but if 
you’re an honest young person and clear- 
eyed, some day you will ask a question that 
you’ve suppressed for two months, yourself 
like the two others, waiting. The very next 
evening, when Jeanie and Spencer were 
alone, out popped Jeanie’s puzzlement. 

‘‘Spencer, why did you accept the election 
to the Editor-in-Chief of the Mentor? Why 
did you accept it, if — ” 

“Why, I thought I could squeeze a little 
time for it in my odd moments, and it came 
to me that even a school paper might help me 
to learn how to be an editor some day.” 
“You’re an editor now!” said Jeanie. 


CHAPTER IV 

THE MONOGRAPH 

^‘CoME, Spencer. Have you forgotten?’’ 
The tap of reminder on Spencer’s shoulder, 
bowed above his school desk, was all the 
sharper because Jeanie had observed the 
sheets under Spencer’s hand. Spencer had 
no business to bring the monograph to school, 
and this on debate day ! During the last six 
weeks Jeanie Campbell had suffered almost 
more than patience could endure. 

Spencer pushed aside his monograph and 
followed Jeanie up the aisle to the platform, 
for the editors of the Mentor, on this momen- 
tous morning of the town debate, had a 
before-school appointment with Professor 
Dorrel. They took their seats now, one on 
each side of his busy table. 

In the long, bleak High Room, where upon 
the ceiling blotches of patched plaster and one 


68 


THE BOY EDITOR 


gaping hole of laths made strange maps for 
young geographers to study; where the win- 
dows went up only with a variety of angles 
and with a variety of efforts, and chiefly 
served, since John Dorrel would have them 
constantly open, as escape for the heat that 
rose from the windy, echoing registers ; where 
the walls showed no decoration but a streak 
of brown stain from a leak in the roof, and the 
fading images of Washington and Lincoln, 
and in the corner by the platform the valiant 
flag long ago presented to the Academy by 
the local G.A.R., — in this long bleak High 
Room, at a battered table, on a little plat- 
form that creaked to his every movement, 
sat John Dorrel, the Mapleton schoolmaster. 
In his deep, quizzical eyes there burned for- 
ever the fires that must forever kindle the 
hearts and brains of boys and girls to fare 
forth on brave Columbus adventuring. 

The High Room was slowly filling with 
youngsters who trickled in. The school- 
master had his nod for each and his quick 


THE MONOGRAPH 69 

glance to see what morning face each was 
bringing from home on this particular day; 
yet his attention never wavered from the boy 
and girl flanking his table. All the faces 
on this January morning were eager and 
alert. 

Jeanie Campbell, all a-shine, swept the 
expanse of the High Room, and then came 
back to gaze with dream-bright eyes at the 
schoolmaster’s face. 

‘'Mr. Dorrel, I can hardly wait for to- 
night ! Just think what it may mean, a whole 
splendid new building for our school! Have 
you looked over Spencer’s notes, Mr. Dorrel, 
for his speech? We’ve worked like anything 
over them. Are they all right?” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Dorrel quietly, and drew 
from his desk drawer the outline sheets of 
Spencer’s speech, to which he had added 
various blue-penciled notes. 

“Do you yourself find the arguments for 
our new building convincing, Mr. Dorrel?” 
inquired Spencer anxiously. 


70 


THE BOY EDITOR 


'‘Yes; but it is n’t a question of convincing 
me, but of convincing the town.” 

"Mr. Dorrel does n’t need to be con- 
vinced,” cried Jeanie. "Look! Is n’t the old 
building enough to convince any of us of the 
need for a new one!” 

Mr. Dorrel now began to go over the out- 
lined pages, commenting in low-voiced, sure 
criticism. Jeanie leaned forward on an eager 
elbow. Spencer kept glancing off, window- 
wards, with remote and tight-drawn brow. 
And all that schoolroom, under courteous 
veil of attention to their own affairs, kept 
watching the three upon the platform. 

"This is good,” said John Dorrel quietly; 
"this argument is clever, effective, good. As 
the Mentor itself is clever, effective, good. 
I congratulate you on both, Spencer.” 

"There, Spencer!” cried Jeanie, all in a 
flame of triumph and pride. 

Spencer Briggs received John Dorrel’s 
words without one syllable of gratitude, for 
he was looking at Jeanie in a confusion of 


THE MONOGRAPH 


71 


thought such as his clear young head had 
never before experienced. It was clear that 
Mr. Dorrel took the Mentor seriously, as 
seriously even as Jeanie did! 

“Spencer's outline is all right, then, you 
think, Mr. Dorrel?" Jeanie went on; “but 
wait till Spencer talks his speech. When he 
speaks, people listen! They’ll listen to- 
night ! Spencer Briggs, do you hear one word 
I’m saying?’’ The abrupt irritation of the 
question was not lost on John Dorrel’s ear, 
but it drew not one word from the abstracted 
Spencer. 

But to turn from Spencer Briggs to Mr. 
Dorrel was to turn Jeanie’s thoughts, spoken 
now with a breathless catch, — 

“We’ve worked six weeks over this de- 
bate. We’ll win or die! And we’ll win the 
new schoolhouse or die, too. But — but — 
suppose we don’t, Mr. Dorrel; you’ll know 
anyway what it was all for, all we’ve tried to 
do ? It ’s for you, to show you that we under- 
stand just how you care.’’. 


72 


THE BOY EDITOR 


The twinkle softened suddenly in the 
schoolmaster’s eyes. ‘‘That you understand 
just how I care?” 

“Just how you care about us all. I guess 
I know how it feels to work and work over 
people. I just guess I understand how you 
feel, Mr. Dorrel!” 

The schoolmaster’s voice was musing 
and gentle. “That’s a good deal to expect 
of any pupil, Jeanie, to understand how I 
feel.” 

“And Spencer understands, too, and 
appreciates, Mr. Dorrel. That’s why he’s 
going to put it all into his speech to-night.” 

Jeanie looked at Spencer. Spencer looked 
at the blackboard beyond her head. 

“Spencer, can’t you say something?” 

“About what?” 

“Why, about getting the new schoolhouse 
for Mr. Dorrel?” 

A pause during which Spencer’s thoughts 
came back from the blackboard, for he had 
learned to be a little afraid of Jeanie. 


THE MONOGRAPH 73 

“No, I don’t think I can, before to-night,” 
he said. 

It invariably seemed to John Dorrel’s 
pupils that relentless clock-hands closed 
every conversation with their schoolmaster 
before it was half over. Professor Dorrel rose 
now. “That’s all for the present?” he in- 
quired, going to pull the primitive dangling 
bell-rope for First Bell. 

An instant the two young people, risen 
now, stood each at the side of the table, fac- 
ing the room. An instant the eyes of the 
school were raised to them, in a glance that 
repeated what all glances had been expressing 
for exactly four months past, namely this, of 
the two “boys” standing up there, which, 
Jeanie Campbell with her keen, compelling 
eyes, her eager lips, all her flashing friendli- 
ness, or Spencer Briggs, with his frankly far- 
away eyes, his firm, likable mouth, and no 
friendliness whatsoever, — which of the two, 
pray, was really the Editor-in-Chief of the 
Mapleton Mentor ? 


74 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘Tsay, Jeanie,” Spencer detained her by 
a window, ‘Tve got to a puzzling spot in 
my second division of the monograph. You 
know the part about an editor’s social rela- 
tion to the community, his responsibilities as 
a man as well as an editor.? I have the manu- 
script in my desk, for I thought you’d have 
time to go over it with me at recess. Will 
you?” 

“You brought the monograph with you on 
the debate day ? After all the work I ’ve put 
on this debate! You thought I’d go over 
the monograph with you at recess?” The 
flame of sheet lightning that sprang from 
Jeanie’s eyes to Spencer’s made him wince. 
“ You thought I ’d go over it with you to- 
day? Well, I won’t!” 

“Look out, Spencer! And look out, 
Jeanie!” Thus Hiram Scott, but unheard, 
for he merely addressed his Latin grammar. 

Jeanie strode to her seat in such visible 
wrath as made that observant schoolroom 
turn from her to Spencer, who even thus 


THE MONOGRAPH 


IS 

quickly had forgotten Jennie's anger in his 
many thoughts, swinging, as those thoughts 
were now, between Jennie’s Mentor and his 
own monograph. Spencer glanced up to meet 
those lines of eyes, looking at him, and sud- 
denly smiled his delightful and always unex- 
pected smile, for he liked looking into those 
eyes, and he remembered he was going to 
make a speech that evening, and he liked 
making speeches. 

Professor Dorrel and Hiram Scott were 
not the only gentlemen who were wondering 
how much longer Jeanie’s temper was going 
to hold out. It had been an entertaining 
winter for Alan Campbell, this watching two 
young people change, under his very eyes. 
He had been content so far to be an observer 
of the process, but before dinner was over on 
this day he had decided to be an actor, too, 
to find out once and for all something he 
wanted to know about this young man, H. 
Spencer Briggs. 

It was a restless Jeanie at noon that day, 


THE BOY EDITOR 


76 

one who forgot to eat the holiday dinner 
she’d taken pains to have stout Dutch Minna 
provide. It always did Jeanie good to see 
Spencer eat. That was one way in which her 
tall protege was thoroughly satisfactory. She 
regarded him from head to foot with a critical 
maternal eye. 

‘‘You’ll remember to dress up to-night, 
Spencer? The whole town is going to be 
there, and all the school is going to dress up, 
so that, — why, so that people will think 
we’re worth putting into a better building. 
I’m going to fix up myself, if I can possibly 
get time before eight. I have n’t had a 
minute to do up my hair lately. Now, 
Spencer, remember, dress up!” 

“In what?” 

The question produced a blank silence. 
“Well, then, brush them!” sighed Jeanie at 
last; “brush what you’ve got on, hard.” 

“All right,” said Spencer, returning to his 
fricasseed chicken, only to be recalled by a 
wistful “Spencer?” 


THE MONOGRAPH 


77 


^‘Whatisit?” 

‘‘Spencer, won’t you remember to-night 
to — well, sort of try to feel as if you were a 
pretty grand person, standing up there to 
argue for a big thing. So much is at stake 
to-night!” 

“The new schoolhouse ?” 

“Yes, but that’s not all. Some — some 
people — are at stake, too, perhaps, a little. 
The town expects a lot of the school, and the 
school expects a lot of you, Spencer, our 
Editor-in-Chief. Spencer, does n’t it ever 
come into your mind that if — if you should 
get the Vote of Approval in May, it would be 
worth something?” Jeanie’s serious pleading 
suddenly changed to a cheery laugh. “Why, 
one part of it, the smallest, is money; you 
could have two suits at once if you got the 
Vote of Approval in May.” 

“I never think of the Vote of Approval.” 

“Mr. Dorrel does!” 

Spencer looked up in surprise. “Why?” 

“Because it means that an editor has 


78 THE BOY EDITOR 

fulfilled the expectations people have had of 
him!” 

“People?” queried Spencer. “Do you 
mean the school?” 

“Of course I do. Are n’t we all people, 
people who expect something of you?” 

“They are boys and girls,” said Spencer 
loftily, “and I know only two or three of 
them. By ‘people’ I mean, — well, people 
are those, for instance, who will read my 
monograph some day, provided it has a 
chance to be published. You do think I can 
get it published some day, don’t you, Mr. 
Campbell?” 

Alan Campbell’s heavy reddish eyebrows 
drew down over penetrating eyes. “Yes, I 
think it is possible, Spencer.” 

The words sounded harmless; it was the 
tone that worried Jeanie. “Father,” she 
inquired anxiously, “you’re coming to 
Brown’s Hall to-night, are n’t you, surely, to 
hear Spencer?” 

“I’m coming to hear you all.” 


THE MONOGRAPH 


79 


“We’re depending most on Spencer. Hi- 
ram will be good, though he’ll be too slow, 
and Raymond Ellis will be good, too, though 
he’ll be too quick. The people on the town 
side are pretty strong; old Mr. Judson Hyde, 
he’ll use very few words, but they’ll hit the 
nail, and Major Sturtevant is rather long- 
winded, but he always stirs people up dread- 
fully; but Howard Stephenson is the most 
dangerous one of the three. It’s only five 
years since he was an Academy boy, and here 
he is arguing against our new building to- 
night, and talking town hall high and low all 
the time!” 

“Do you blame him, really? Seeing that 
Brown’s Hall is all the place there is for the 
big meeting to-night, and it’s been almost 
condemned by the building inspectors. Don’t 
vou think yourself this town needs a town 
hall?” 

“Why, Spencer Briggs, don’t you remem- 
ber your own arguments for to-night? Of 
course Mapleton needs a town hall some day. 


8o 


THE BOY EDITOR 


but it needs a new school first! place for 
education first, and then a place to use it,’ 
weVe got that down in our notes. And 
‘Mapleton Academy is the honor of the 
county, the Mapleton Academy building is 
the dishonor of the town!’ Don’t you believe 
your own speech ? Think of our old building 
as a building for Mr. Dorrel!” 

“Oh, I know what’s in my speech!” 

“And, Spencer, you do intend to distin- 
guish yourself to-night, to show people 
what’s in you?” 

“I don’t believe I’ve thought about that 
part at all.” 

“Spencer Briggs, don’t you ever care 
what anybody thinks of you?” 

“Yes,” said Spencer unexpectedly, “but 
he is n’t going to be there to-night.” 

“Well, we’re going to be there, all the 
school and all the town. And if you don’t 
care, you ought to! You ought to care for 
your responsibility to people who’ve elected 
you editor, and helped you, and got you this 


THE MONOGRAPH 


8i 


chance to speak, and watched you and 
worked over you, and everything — 

‘‘Why, who’s done all that? I wasn’t 
expecting anybody to look after me like that, 
and nobody has. I don’t see that I’m par- 
ticularly responsible to anybody. It has all 
just happened.” 

“If you took a little more interest, Spen- 
cer, it would be” — Jeanie grew a little 
vague — “it would be one way of saying 
‘thank you.’” 

“To whom?” asked Spencer wonderingly. 

Jeanie’s humor helped her, it touched her 
wistful tremulous lips, making them sud- 
denly wise and whimsical. “Oh, to no one in 
particular, Spencer! It’s as you say. It has 
all just happened.” Then Jeanie became 
aware that for once she had forgotten her 
father looking on, and, flaming with irritation 
at herself, she jumped up to hide from him 
any more feelings that might be betrayed. 
In her father’s eyes she saw that he was 
thinking of a sentiment that he had previ- 


82 


THE BOY EDITOR 


ously expressed, — “That young man must 
learn to say ‘thank you/” 

“ I Ve a hundred things to do ! ” Jeanie was 
flying about, snatching up coat and hat, and 
stamping into her low rubbers in boy fashion. 
“And Spencer, don’t, don’t, don’t forget 
that you are to meet Hiram and Raymond at 
the schoolhouse for the last preparations at 
four. We girls have got to go to Brown’s Hall 
to fix the chairs and fill those old glass lamps 
— such a smoky old hole for us to have to 
meet in. And I’ve a hundred other things to 
do that I’ve forgotten, but if I run fast 
enough probably I ’ll run into some of them 
on the way. Good-bye!” 

But it was no part of Jeanie’s forgotten 
programme that, an hour later, she should 
collide with a tall old man, who twinkled at 
her grimly, muttering, “The Scotchman’s 
girl again!” 

Now, just half an hour before Jeanie’s col- 
lision, a tall young man had avoided a colli- 
sion for himself with this same old man by 


THE MONOGRAPH 83 

tumbling into the nearest doorway. Here, 
blinking and bewildered, Spencer Briggs 
found himself among tall, clattering presses, 
black and greasy and redolent of ink. He 
gazed about in this dusky place he had never 
before penetrated to find a shirt-sleeved, red- 
topped man who looked vaguely familiar, 
regarding him from an old armchair before a 
cluttered inky desk. Spencer blinked at him 
from behind his big spectacles. 

‘"Did you waht to see me, Spencer?’^ 
inquired Alan Campbell. 

“No,’" said Spencer Briggs. 

“Well, Spencer, since you thus happen in, 
I believe I do want to see you. I have just 
made up my mind to run up to New York 
to-morrow on business. If you could get your 
monograph in shape a little, I’d be glad to 
take it along with me and let a publisher 
friend of mine have a look at it. I know it’s a 
busy day for you to-day. Do you think you 
could let me have some part of the manu- 
script?” 


84 


THE BOY EDITOR 


^Tt needs copying.” 

“Will you have time, do you think, to-day, 
Spencer?” 

Alan CampbelFs eyes probed Spencer’s 
spectacles for a full , half-minute before 
Spencer’s answer came. 


CHAPTER V 


THE DEBATE 

What should old Stephen Pelham do but 
face about, and trudge silently by Jeanie’s 
side as if in sudden resolution? “Let’s drop 
in here,” he said in gruff command when 
they were in front of the Twin Pines. There 
were other hotels in Mapleton with impres- 
sive false fronts of seeming brick, but Ste- 
phen Pelham, as his fathers had done before 
him, patronized the Twin Pines, with its 
two tiers of sagging porches and its windy, 
fading sign-board. He tramped ahead of 
Jeanie into the inn parlor with its worn 
brown oilcloth, its dusty marble-topped table, 
its framed funeral wreaths on the low walls. 
Stephen Pelham thrust a fresh chunk of wood 
into the sheet-iron stove, clanging the door 
shut with a large boot toe. It was a cheerless 
room. There was bright January sun outside. 


86 


THE BOY EDITOR 


but inside no sunshine but Jeanie’s bright 
hair and cheeks and eyes. 

‘‘Well/’ said Stephen Pelham, turning 
about, “how ’s your boarder?” 

And behold, the wondering Jeanie saw on 
the grizzled old face the same look she some- 
times perceived on the face of H. Spencer 
Briggs and described to herself as “hungry 
without knowing it.” It so happened that, 
if Stephen Pelham had not perceived his 
grandson fleeing from him into the Chronicle 
office, he would probably himself have found 
some means of fleeing from his grandson. 

“Spencer’s all right. Spencer’s going to 
lead the debate for the new school building at 
Brown’s Hall to-night.” 

“That’s what I’m here for,” said Stephen 
Pelham. 

“It’s going to be great, for Spencer knows 
howto talk!” 

“And to write! Take his paper. Knows 
how to run a paper. Wonder where he 
learned. Look at his articles! Editorials for 


THE DEBATE 87 

the new school building enough to stir the 
State! And "Out-into-the-World’ letters, 
enough to clean the farms of every boy there 
is 1 Don’t agree with either lot of arguments 
myself. But they’re good writing. Boy has a 
head. Did n’t know he had so much. Must 
be waking up. Don’t agree with a word he 
writes, but like it.” 

A queer little voice asked, ‘‘Do you like 
the first editorials, Mr. Pelham?” 

“ So, so. Good, yes, very good. But not on 
the spot, that’s all. Nothing like the rest of 
the Mentor. ‘Out-into-the-World’ letters 
take all Old Fogy’s wits to answer ’em, don’t 
you think so?” 

“I don’t think Old Fogy does answer them, 
but Spencer thinks Old Fogy’s letters are 
better than ours.” 

“ Spencer thinks that ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Spencer’s a fool, then.” 

“Of course he is,” expanded Jeanie. “He 
says that part in Old Fogy’s letter two weeks 


88 


THE BOY EDITOR’ 


ago, ‘Live deep enough anywhere and you’ll 
live big enough,’ — Spencer says there’s no 
answering that, really.” 

“Writes pretty good arguments for a 
fellow who don’t believe ’em, then,” mused 
Stephen Pelham. “ I ’d have sworn the fellow 
who wrote those ‘Out-into-the-World’ letters 
believed ’em.” 

“ She — he — he — does ! ” stammered 

Jeanie. 

“I’d have thought Spencer believed ’em 
an5way from all I ’ve ever seen of him and a 
farm.” 

“He ought to! For of course it’s right for 
every clever boy to have all the chance out in 
the world that he can, the biggest chance to 
work up in his profession, to the very top! 
a boy like Spencer!” 

“I have my plans for Spencer!” 

“So have I, Mr. Pelham!” 

Jeanie faced the old man with flashing eyes 
of challenge. She had adopted her boarder 
and she was bringing him up, and she had no 


THE DEBATE 89 

mind to have a mere grandfather interfering 
with Spencer Briggs’s career ! 

Stephen Pelham suddenly flung forth a big 
laugh of pure humor. “Spencer know that 
you’ve got plans for him?” 

Flaming red at his amusement, but re- 
pressing her anger, Jeanie choked out the 
words, “I haven’t told him yet. I’m wait- 
ing.” 

Stephen Pelham grew instantly grave. 
“ I have n’t told him yet either. I ’m waiting, 
too. For to-night, for one thing.” 

Jeanie was looking at Spencer’s grand- 
father with an anxious question trembling 
to her lips. 

“Spencer got any plans of his own for 
himself, do you think?” asked Stephen 
Pelham. 

“Oh, yes, plans for ten years from now. 
You know how he is. But my plans for him 
are for this very next year.” 

“So are mine.” 

“Mr. Pelham, what are yours ?” 


90 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Stephen Pelham looked at Jeanie with a 
twinkle in his deep-set eyes. ‘‘I’m not 
telling,” he said. 

Jeanie’s lips opened, then shut in a tense 
irritation. 

Stephen Pelham regarded her with his deep 
twinkle. “Not very well pleased, are you?” 
he said; “what do you think of the boy’s old 
grandfather, I wonder.” 

“I think,” said Jeanie, looking him 
squarely in the eye, “that you’re the kind of 
man who might some time make me very 
mad, as Spencer does. And I don’t believe, 
somehow, that you’ve ever been very good 
to Spencer.” 

There it was again, that look that was 
“hungry without knowing it.” “Perhaps 
not,” muttered Stephen Pelham; “perhaps 
not.” Then the ragged, grizzled lips parted 
in a smile that was as sudden and surpris- 
ing as Spencer’s own. “ But I guess I know 
some one who has been very good to Spencer; 
yet, I’ll warrant, Spencer don’t know it.” 


THE DEBATE 


91 


Jeanie’s vivid face beneath her visored cap 
grew suddenly strange. She made no answer. 

‘‘Well/’ said Stephen Pelham, “you were 
in a hurry when I met you. Now that I Ve 
had what I wanted of you, I ’ll not keep you.” 
Jeanie jumped up, remembering all those 
many matters she must see to. ^ “Shake 
hands?” questioned old Stephen Pelham, 
and Jeanie’s mittened fist was swallowed in 
a horny paw that demonstrated that if, as 
Jeanie had once said, Spencer Briggs did not 
know how to shake hands, his grandfather 
did. 

But when Jeanie was once again flying 
along the street with her boy’s swing, she 
said to herself, “But what was it he wanted 
with me?” Then there grew upon her face a 
smile that was not a boy’s smile at all, but a 
woman’s, as she whispered, “I guess he just 
wanted to talk, like any other boy.” 

It was seven-thirty-five, and Alan Camp- 
bell stood in his sitting-room, waiting. He 
was studying the pattern in the rug. Things 


92 


THE BOY EDITOR 


had happened on that afternoon which made 
Alan Campbell feel guilty. He turned at a 
stop, then fell back ; his lips were first wide- 
opened, then they puckered into a long 
whistle. Alan Campbell forgot every thought 
in one, that one which comes to every father 
only once, at sight of a daughter’s first long 
skirt. But it was not only the skirt. 

‘^Jeanie, what have you got on?” 

‘"Oh, clothes! Clothes that I thought 
would do for to-night. But, O father, where 
is Spencer? I’ve set everybody to find him 
ever since four o’clock. He is n’t in the 
schoolhouse. He is n’t in the street. He 
has n’t been to supper. He is n’t anywhere! 
O father, where is he?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“If he is n’t there to-night, what shall we 
do! Father, it’s everything, everything gone 
wrong if he does n’t come! The debate will 
be lost, the Vote of Approval will be lost, 
for the school will never forgive him, and — 
and — the Chronicle will be lost next year,” 


THE DEBATE 


93 

she looked into her father’s face, ^Tor you’ll 
not take him as your assistant, either, I’m 
afraid?” 

‘T’ve never said I’d take him as my 
assistant.” 

But perhaps you would if he got the Vote 
of Approval.” 

*"I certainly would n’t take him without it. 
Faithful in a few things, ruler over many; 
that’s a business as well as a Bible rule.” 
Thus firmly did Alan Campbell have to 
speak to bolster his own guilty conscience, as 
he saw the look on Jeanie’s face, a new look, 
white, set. It made her father start, almost 
as if Jeanie had known, what she could not 
have known, of Spencer’s visit to the Chron- 
icle office that afternoon; for Jeanie said, 
very low, — 

^‘Spencer is being tested, to-night!” 

They waited seven minutes longer, then a 
small voice belonging to a tall girl said, 
‘‘We’d better go without him!” 

For one who has known all the cubby- 


94 


THE BOY EDITOR 


holes of a ramshackle building in the inti- 
macy of janitorship, it is not difficult to find a 
place, of retirement. The cupola is an im- 
pregnable stronghold, even if it is warmed 
only by January sunshine. If you are over- 
coated, and if you indulge in frequent stretch- 
ings and slappings, you may stay up there 
unassailed until the last searcher after you 
has given up the building in despair. It is 
also possible, on a generous pocketful of 
oyster crackers, to forego supper, and to 
write and write until at last you are roused to 
a vague bewilderment, wondering why in the 
world you are sitting in the dusky, chilly 
schoolhouse when you might be in the Camp- 
bell sitting-room. Up you get, gather to- 
gether your papers, and trudge off to said 
sitting-room, finding it, for some strange 
reason, blissfully deserted of all actual edi- 
tors, both of Mentors and Chronicles, so that 
you are left happily alone with that ideal 
editor you are some day going to be. You 
write and write, while, like your own hands. 


THE DEBATE 


95 

the clock-hands move on and on. You are 
writing this : — 

"‘An editor belongs to his paper, and his 
paper belongs to the public, therefore the 
editor also belongs to the public, is its serv- 
ant. He belongs to his community not only 
professionally but personally. Not only his 
paper but the man himself should be at the 
service of every good cause. Whatever his 
personal ambition, he should be ready always 
to sacrifice it to public service, for like every 
other public servant an editor does not be- 
long to himself, but to his town, his State, 
his country!"’ 

A sound struck across Spencer’s fervid 
words, — the closing of the front door. 
Spencer glanced up. A woman was standing 
by the fireplace, one he had never seen before. 
She was tall and wore a brown suit. The 
skirt touched the floor. She had on rich 
black furs, a little-prized Christmas gift from 
a devoted father. A black hat with a sweep- 
ing plume was on her head. The black hat 


THE BOY EDITOR 


96 

and furs brought out the ruddy gold of her 
hair, and showed how clear-cut and radiantly 
colored was her face. This may be said to be 
the first time that Spencer Briggs saw Jeanie 
Campbell! Yet he did not know that it was 
Jeanie, he did not know until she spoke, 
although it was not her voice that identified 
her, for it was a voice Spencer had never 
heard before, low and taut with arraign- 
ment. 

“Spencer, where have you been.?” 

“Here.” 

“Why?” 

“My monograph. I have a chance — ” 

“Then it is true,” said Jeanie with quiet 
finality. 

“What?” asked Spencer. 

“That you are not true to trust!” came 
low, staccato sentences. “That you care 
more for your monograph than you do for 
the Mentor! That you care more for your 
ambition than for your duty! That you care 
more for yourself than for people! All these 


THE DEBATE 


97 

things are true of you in spite of all that I 
have believed!’’ 

Spencer looked at Jeanie as she looked at 
him. Both seemed to be studying the inside 
of each other’s head. 

Spencer, do you know what has happened 
to-night?” 

‘T see some things that have happened 
to-night,” said Spencer quietly, not dropping 
his eyes from their study of her face. 

Jeanie’s tone grew icy, like frosty metal. 
^^Do you happen to remember some of the 
things that were to have happened to-night? 
Such as a debate ? Such as our trying to show 
this town how much Mr. Dorrel’s school 
needs a new schoolhouse? Do you happen 
to remember that the school had chosen you, 
our Editor-in-Chief, to represent us? to 
help us?” 

‘T was to make a speech, to lead the 
debate.” 

Why did n’t you?” 

‘‘I forgot.” 


98 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘^Forgot!” breathed Jeanie, ‘‘tonight!’’ 

After a while Spencer asked, very quietly, 
“What happened, without me?” 

“We won!” cried Jeanie, “we won! We 
had not all forgotten what the school and 
Mr. Dorrel expected of the Mentor ! We won ! 
People went wild and cheered and cheered. 
You should have seen Mr. Dorrel’s face!” 

“Who spoke,” asked Spencer, “in my 
place?” 

“I did! I am Assistant Editor. It was my 
place to represent the Mentor, and to help 
the school.” 

“It was my place,” said Spencer calmly, 
judicially. 

“Of course!” said Jeanie, with a sudden 
bitter little laugh, which must have cleared 
the air of suppressed thunder, for her face 
changed, and her voice. “O Spencer, Spen- 
cer, why did n’t you come? There were so 
many people there, watching, waiting, listen- 
ing, my father and your grandfather, and 
Professor Dorrel and Hiram and all the 


THE DEBATE 


99 


school and all the town! If only you could 
have shown them that you cared, and could 
speak, for a big town thing, like this I Think 
of all that has been lost, and all that might 
have been won!” 

“But you did win the debate, — you!” 

All the young lady aspect of Jeanie sud- 
denly disappeared in a rage. 

“I! Did I want to? Did I want people 
congratulating me, and shaking my hand? 
and going on over me? Did I want it? And 
acting as if the Mentor and the speech were 
mine? Why, Spencer Briggs,” Jeanie was 
crimson with fury, “after all IVe tried to do 
with you, did n’t I want all that for you ? Did 
I want people making all that fuss over me ? 
To think of all you’ve lost, — the chance to 
— oh, so many chances!” 

Now when Spencer Briggs’s spectacles 
did see a thing, they saw it with amazing 
clearness! “Yes,” said the judicial young 
voice, “I seem to have lost a good deal to- 
night.” 


lOO 


THE BOY EDITOR 


They were silent, two whole minutes, by 
the mantel clock. 

‘"But the debate was won,"’ said Spencer, 
“thanks to you.” 

“Yes,” returned Jeanie, forgetting anger 
in the bigger cause, “ the town is started now ! 
It won’t stop ! We ’ll keep up the excitement ! 
The debate’s won, and the schoolhouse is 
won, too! That is, I hope it is!” She sud- 
denly realized she was very tired, and sank 
into a chair, dropping her furs on the floor, 
and tugging at unfamiliar hat-pins. Jeanie 
looked more like her old self now, yet the 
expression of her face was wholly strange. 
Familiar as Spencer was with her keen in- 
spection of him, there was something new in 
Jeanie’s cool, aloof eyes. 

“Spencer Briggs, I do not understand you. 
Do you always think only of yourself? Do 
you never think of the people who expect 
things of you?” 

Spencer was silent; there was a curious 
flicker back of his glasses. 


THE DEBATE 


lOI 


‘‘I do not understand any one/’ continued 
Jeanie, '‘who has no ideal of public service.” 

Without replying, Spencer leaned forward 
a little, and with slow strokes crossed out the 
paragraph he had been writing when Jeanie 
entered. Then he lifted his eyes and looked 
into Jeanie’s. An alarm she did not under- 
stand tugged at Jeanie’s heart, he seemed so 
faraway! 

"Spencer, what are you thinking about?” 

Spencer smiled a grim little smile. "What 
you said I always think about, — myself.” 

Again they sat looking at each other in 
silence, thinking, both of them, of the 
months that were past and the months that 
were to come. The fireplace and the table 
and the bookshelves seemed unfamiliar as did 
their own faces. A stirring in the hall made 
Jeanie start up, for she was in no mood 
to be under her father’s inspection just then. 

"Good-night, Spencer,” she said. 

Tall, remote, grown-up, she seemed to 
Spencer, and very far away. 


102 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘Good-night/’ he said. 

A half-hour later Alan Campbell came to 
the sitting-room door, unperceived. He saw 
a boy kneeling before the fireplace, slowly 
burning sheet after sheet of written foolscap. 
Still unperceived, Alan Campbell stole away. 
He had found out something he had wished 
to know about Herbert Spencer Briggs. 

When Alan Campbell departed for New 
York on Saturday morning he neither carried 
with him the monograph, nor did he mention 
it, seeing that it lay in ashes on the fireplace 
together with certain other hopes of Spen- 
cer’s. When people like Herbert Spencer 
Briggs wake up, there is always the danger 
that they may do it too thoroughly. Spencer 
Briggs was seeing so much that he appeared 
more blind than ever, and more deaf, and 
also dumb. It was a very uncomfortable 
time for Alan Campbell to have chosen to be 
absent in New York. Miles of tablecloth 
seemed to stretch between Spencer and 
Jeanie. Spencer was looking pretty pale, but 


THE DEBATE 


103 


he devoured much food, absently. Notwith- 
standing dark pencilings beneath his eyes, 
his spectacles faced Jeanie squarely; there 
was nothing of the hang-dog about Herbert 
Spencer Briggs. 

It was Jeanie’s eyes that drooped a little. 
They both of them had clear young mouths; 
it was on Jeanie’s that bitterness showed. 
On Saturday she had abruptly tumbled her 
hair down again into its tie-back tangle, she 
had returned to her square-cut shoes and her 
square-cut shirt-waist and her short skirt, 
but these things did not make Jeanie the 
same boy again. Now that Spencer at last 
saw Jeanie Campbell, it was a different Jeanie 
that he saw. 

Spencer did not linger in the sitting-room 
on this Saturday. At meals the two spoke in 
monosyllables of the weather and the food. 
They stood this silence until Sunday after- 
noon. Then it seemed better to talk, at any 
cost. After dinner Spencer marched into the 
sitting-room and sat down with emphasis 


THE BOY EDITOR 


104 

and resolution. He continued the conversa- 
tion of Friday night as if it had never been 
broken off. 

“From this time on/’ he said, “I am go- 
ing to be Editor-in-Chief of the Mapleton 
Mentor!” 

Jeanie had flung herself into a long chair, 
with one arm tossed above her head in a 
gesture of weariness unusual with her. 

“It is rather late,” she answered, “to 
begin.” 

“Too late, you think.?” 

“Too late, for a good many things, since 
Friday.” 

“But the debate was won, on Friday.” 

“But it was not won for you!” 

“Why, what difference does that make?” 

“All the difference,” said the even, caustic 
voice, “between success and failure, for you, 
this year.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“The school will never forgive you; there- 
fore, no Vote of Approval. And Mr. Dorrel, 


THE DEBATE 


los 

he is never the same to a person who has 
failed in a trust. Neither is father. Spencer, 
I believe father would have made you his 
assistant next year if you could have won the 
Vote of Approval. It was a hope, a plan I 
had, for you.’" 

‘‘Your father!” the color flamed to Spen- 
cer’s cheeks, then died suddenly, leaving 
them a gray-white. “He has thought of 
making me his assistant, assistant to a real 
editor, next year!” 

“I think he was thinking about it,” said 
Jeanie honestly; “I was thinking about it 
anyway.” 

“I had never dreamed of such a thing!” 
said Spencer, breathless, burning-eyed. 

“Well, I don’t believe father is thinking 
much about it now! not since Friday.” 

“Yet it was chiefly to win his approval 
that I was working on Friday so hard at the 
monograph. I thought he — ” 

“The monograph was not the way to win 
father’s approval.” 


io6 THE BOY EDITOR 

^‘He cares more, you mean,” exclaimed 
Spencer astonished, ‘‘he and Professor Dor- 
rel, for success with the Mentor, a school 
paper, than for — ” 

“ Don’t you see why ? ” said Jeanie wearily ; 
“ it is clear enough. Success with the Mentor 
would mean that you have an ideal of 
editorial responsibility.” 

“I have,” said Spencer calmly, “an ideal 
of editorial responsibility.” 

“You have never shown it,” said Jeanie, 
“to any of us. And now it is too late, since 
last Friday.” 

“You really think it is too late?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then clearly,” said Herbert Spencer 
Briggs, “for the five months left, I must be 
Editor-in-Chief of the Mapleton Mentor.” 

“O Spencer, Spencer,” said Jeanie, tired to 
the point of irritation, “you can’t! You 
don’t know how to run a paper, really. Why, 
you might spoil everything now. You’d 
much better continue to — ”, 


THE DEBATE 


107 


*‘To let you do all the work?’’ 

‘‘Well, but, Spencer,” pleaded Jeanie 
anxiously, “how in the world could we tell 
what you might do if you actually took the 
Mentor in charge, now ? ” 

“Yet the school chose me for the position.” 

“That was in September.” 

“They would n’t choose me now? I never 
could see why they chose me then. Do you 
know how it ever happened?” 

A queer little smile pulled at Jeanie’s 
mouth. “Yes, perhaps I do!” But in spite of 
Spencer’s expectant look she did not con- 
tinue. 

“Well, whatever they chose me to do, I 
must do, henceforth!” declared Spencer. 

“Of course,” Jeanie went on apprehen- 
sively, “there’s a good deal more you could 
do, write more editorials, help with the 
proof, but as to actually running the thing, 
why — ” 

“I propose,” reiterated Herbert Spencer 
Briggs, “henceforth to run it.” 


io8 THE BOY EDITOR 

*‘0 Spencer, what is it you mean to 
do?’’ 

‘"My duty,” announced Spencer grimly; 
“You showed it to me on Friday night!” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE AWAKENING 

On Monday morning after a silent break- 
fast Spencer lingered a little to see if Jeanie 
were going to walk with him to school, as 
usual. He even stood awhile, an act unpre- 
cedented, to whistle to Jeanie’s canary as it 
swung in the sun-flooded, curtainless dining- 
room window. But after five minutes off 
went Spencer, hands in his pockets and head 
held high. Jeanie did not walk to school with 
him that morning, nor for many mornings 
after. To-day she did not want to go to 
school at all, although she knew she would 
walk to her desk through a path of glowing 
congratulations and handshakes. Jeanie felt 
pretty lonesome, and was glad her father 
would be back at noon; yet he’d better not 
do any watching or talking to-day, that 
father of hers! 


I lO 


THE BOY EDITOR 


It was through no path of congratulation 
that Spencer Briggs found his seat in the 
High Room ! His head was erect and his eyes 
steady. He looked at no one, but he saw 
everybody. He saw each buzzing, excited 
knot of boys and girls. No one but Spencer 
himself was seated. He heard the scurry of 
the girls’ feet up and down the aisles as they 
sped from group to group. He heard the 
glad hum of excitement all up and down the 
bare big room, heard everywhere echoed 
words of the Friday night debate, heard 
Jeanie’s name ringing proudly from every 
shifting circle, saw eyes constantly turned to 
the door to watch for Jeanie, saw Raymond 
Ellis and Hiram Scott thumped on the back 
and shaken by the hand until they must have 
been breathless ; evidently they, too, as well 
as Jeanie, had made school and town proud 
of them. Excitement had got into every- 
body’s arms and legs and voice. Sam Klein, 
the long, lean school clown, entered the room 
with a flying leap over the first desk and an 


THE AWAKENING 


1 1 1 


unrestrained whoop. It was the first time the 
school had met as a body since their Friday 
triumph. Only one person sat in the long 
room motionless, most studiously unheeded 
by all, for, questioned on Saturday as to why 
he had failed to appear at the debate, Spen- 
cer Briggs had replied, steady and unfalter- 
ing, forgot all about it.” 

Yet boys and girls who had caught from 
their teacher the trick of character study 
could not help noting both on Saturday and 
now Spencer Briggs’s manner. Clearly, he 
had failed them in a crisis, clearly also he 
acknowledged the fact, yet there was some- 
thing about his level-fronting eyes, his strong, 
set mouth that still compelled expectation or 
at least curiosity. Boys and girls who seemed 
so carefully inattentive to Spencer Briggs saw 
that for once he and Jeanie did not enter 
the schoolroom together. They surmised the 
possible absence henceforth of Jeanie Camp- 
bell’s apron string! 

No one, however, looked at Spencer 


1 12 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Briggs, not even Mr. Dorrel, whose face was 
all alight like those of his pupils, and whose 
step was almost as light and lively as Sam 
Klein’s as he moved at last to pull the bell- 
rope. It was the first time in all Spencer’s 
term at Mapleton Academy that Mr. Dorrel 
had not nodded him good-morning. Not 
until the last stroke of the last bell did Jeanie 
Campbell slip into her seat near the door. All 
turned around to her with eloquent faces, but 
Jeanie’s smile in answer was a very weary 
one. Just then Spencer Briggs felt a tap on 
his shoulder from the seat behind, heard a 
voice in his ear. “Take a tramp with me this 
afternoon?” whispered Hiram Scott. 

“Yes!” for the first time that morning a 
tremor ran along Spencer’s steel-tight lips. 

It was a long day until four o’clock. The 
school was slow in scattering, having so much 
still to talk over. As in the morning, Spencer 
made his way through groups that somehow 
contrived to show him only backs, not faces, 
but he felt eyes upon him, eyes everywhere. 


THE AWAKENING 


113 

He little dreamed that if the school had not 
felt Hiram Scott amply equipped to be their 
representative, there would have been other 
boys to volunteer this afternoon for a walk 
and a talk with the Mentor’s Editor. 

Yet one person had a smile for Spencer, 
now at the end of the afternoon, for all day 
John Dorrel had been studying Spencer 
Briggs, so that now there was a flashing nod 
from the schoolmaster’s desk as the boy 
passed. For the first time that day, Spencer’s 
steady eyes dropped. 

Side by side the two boys tramped the 
Mapleton pavement. Mapleton is a town of 
straggling streets, so that it is a long walk 
before you get safe out upon the crisp, snowy 
country roads of the river valley girt by its 
twin lines of blue Pennsylvania mountains. 
While on the town streets Spencer still felt 
eyes upon him, as in school. Hiram spoke to 
many people, right and left, but Spencer 
spoke to no one of the passers-by. 

As they neared the rickety business block 


THE BOY EDITOR 


1 14 

which contained on its third floor Brown’s 
Hall, Spencer said, — 

‘‘A pity that this is the best a town like 
Mapleton can show in the way of public 
buildings.” 

‘‘Yes,” agreed Hiram. 

As they passed the Chronicle office, Spen- 
cer’s face grew set and strange. He was 
thinking of the possibilities for power and 
service that somehow lay within the clatter 
of those inky presses. Too late, Jeanie had 
said ! Spencer’s thoughts were jerked out to 
Hiram in sharp, staccato impulse, — 

“One thing Mapleton has to be proud of, 
its paper and its editor, the Chronicle and 
Mr. Campbell!” 

“Spencer, you sound quite like a citizen.” 

“I hope so,” said Spencer in surprise; “I 
feel that I am a Mapleton citizen.” 

“ Pretty good old place, Mapleton,” Hiram 
went on; “I’m glad I was born here.” 

“I’m glad I came here,” said Spencer. 

Hiram turned quickly, “Why?” 


THE AWAKENING 




“ Because of the school.” 

“You care, then, for the school!” 

“I care for the school and for Mr. Dorrel 
and for the town.” 

“Then, why — ” 

“I forgot, on Friday. That is all. I forgot. 
I shan’t forget again. I see, now.” 

“See what?” 

“Myself, past, present, and future.” 

“Whew!” said Hiram; “that’s a good deal 
to see, for one day!” 

“I see more than that,” said Spencer 
grimly, “to-day.” 

“I say,” Hiram hesitated, “I would n’t see 
it all to-day. Leave a little over for to- 
morrow.” 

“No. I want to see. I’ve made up my 
mind.” 

“To do what?” 

“I don’t know altogether yet, but to do it, 
that’s all. The first thing is to be Editor of 
the Mentor. I have n’t been so far, except in 
name. I was chosen to be a public servant, 


ii6 THE BOY EDITOR 

and I have n’t been. Henceforth I shall be. 
Henceforth I shall edit my own paper ; no one 
else shall edit it for me.” 

"‘You are seeing,” commented Hiram, “a 
good deal!” Then a glance at Spencer’s 
bright, far-away spectacles made him anx- 
ious. “But, I say, Spencer, don’t do it all at 
once. Go a little slow, while you’re learning. 
Let Jeanie help you.” 

“She won’t want to, now.” 

“Jeanie!” 

“ She ’s different now.” 

“Oh, come, you never can tell about girls.” 

“Girls ? Are they so different from boys ?” 

“Usually.” 

“That’s a matter I’ve never considered,” 
reflected Spencer Briggs. “No, I think J — 
Miss Campbell, feels exactly as I should feel 
in her place. She does n’t think I amount to 
much since I failed her on Friday. My grand- 
father doesn’t think I amount to much 
either, and I’ve lost my chance of showing 
him, for I burned it. Mr. Campbell won’t 


THE AWAKENING 


117 

think I amount to anything, nor Mr. Dorrel, 
Jeanie says. I don’t think I do, myself.” 

must say,” remarked Hiram, "‘that 
you’re very cool about it.” 

“Certainly,” responded Spencer Briggs; 
“it’s all true, but why should n’t I be cool 
about it?” 

Hiram regarded Spencer keenly, slowly. 
“I wonder what you will do with yourself, 
Spencer Briggs, now that you don’t think 
you amount to much.” 

“I shall just go ahead.” 

Hiram fell thoughtful, then quite low he 
said, “It is your way to the top, perhaps.” 

But introspection is an uneasy business 
for two tall boys like these. They flung it off 
for other matters, but their thoughts were 
far apart. They had reached the country 
now, and were trudging the crisp snow that 
glinted with the tracks of sleighs. 

“Hiram,” asked Spencer abruptly, “did 
you ever have a friend?” 

“Well, yes,” Hiram laughed, “I should 


ii8 THE BOY EDITOR 

think so. It’s not a very unusual thing to 
have a friend.” 

“It’s a very unusual thing for me.” 

“Well, don’t you like it?” 

“I find that I did like it, yes.” 

“Is it over then, the friend?” 

“Yes, and I never even knew that I had a 
friend until I lost her, last Friday.” 

“I was afraid of that,” muttered Hiram; 
then after a moment turned to look with 
irrepressible curiosity at the tense face beside 
him. “If you’ve lost her, Spencer, what are 
you going to do about it?” 

“I shall just go ahead,” said Spencer. 

Since this was a subject requiring much 
reflection, the wise Hiram changed it sud- 
denly to another, as he looked down toward 
Mapleton. “Do you know what I can see 
when I look over there? Instead of that 
dirty yellow tumbling-down building with 
its cupola askew, I can see the finest school- 
house that ever happened to Luzerne 
County, growing grander and bigger all the 


THE AWAKENING 


119 

time Fm looking. Fve seen it ever since 
Friday night.” 

‘‘I can see it, too,” said Spencer. 

Then the two turned about, to a brisk 
walk and a brisker talk, which glowed for 
both of them with patriotism, for school and 
town and country, for patriotism was some- 
thing everybody learned at Mapleton Acad- 
emy. When at last they turned back by 
snowy, dusky fields and on into Mapleton 
beneath the flickering street lamps, and stood 
at last before the school door, where the old 
building reared itself in the darkness, all 
unlighted, Hiram said, ‘"By the way, Spen- 
cer, perhaps you Ve got another friend, with- 
out your knowing.” 

Spencer looked blank a moment, puzzled, 
then across his face, far too tense in thought 
to-day, there flashed his radiant, unexpected 
smile. “I see,” he said, and then, “Good- 
night,” as he turned in to his lodging in the 
school office. 

Alan Campbell was a wise father; he knew 


120 


THE BOY EDITOR 


when to watch young people, and when to 
take up his cap of an evening and stroll back 
to his editorial office. Seeing Spencer Briggs 
leave the house immediately after supper, 
and seeing Hiram Scott enter it some half- 
hour later, Alan Campbell rose, turned up 
Jeanie’s tired face to his with a large, ink- 
stained hand, unexpectedly kissed her, and 
left the boy and girl together. 

‘‘Jeanie,” asked Hiram, ‘‘did you see Mr. 
Dorrel? He looked as if he wanted to see 
you.’" 

“I know he did, but I ran away. I did n’t 
want to see him to-day. It’s the first time 
he’s given me a chance in weeks. You know 
how he always manages to be busy or inter- 
rupted or something when he does n’t want 
to see you. But to-day, yes,” admitted 
Jeanie, “I think he did want to see me, but I 
ran away.” 

“If Mr. Dorrel wants a talk with you, 
he’ll have it, and you know it.” 

“Of course, but not to-day.” 


THE AWAKENING 


I2I 


“Why are you afraid to have a talk with 
Mr. DorrelJ.?’^ 

“I don’t know,” hesitated Jeanie. “I don’t 
feel like it, yet, that’s all.” 

“You’ll have to have it, sooner or later,” 
declared Hiram. “I’m sure he has something 
he wants to say. And by the way, J., so 
have I.” 

“What?” 

“ I had a walk with Spencer this afternoon.” 

“So I observed.” 

“Spencer’s all right.” 

“Is he?” 

“ J., Spencer thinks as much of the school 
and the Prof and the Mentor as we do.” 

“He has taken a strange way to show it.” 

“He’s got to have a second chance to 
show the school that he cares, too!” 

“How? It’s too late.” 

“ It won’t be too late when I tell the school 
a thing or two I’ve found out this afternoon. 
I’ve a scheme, J.; I thought of it after our 
walk. I’ve a plan for Spencer Briggs!” 


122 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘It seems to me that a good many people 
have plans for Spencer Briggs, but they 
might as well save themselves the trouble ! ’’ 
Then a recollection brought a doubtful little 
smile to Jeanie’s lips and a caustic quotation 
to her tongue. “See here, Hiram, I would n’t 
try to run the earth if I were you.” 

“Running the earth is n’t so much in my 
line as yours, that’s true, J. All the same, 
I’ve a scheme for Spencer Briggs.” 

“What?” 

“It’s called the Mentor Alliance.” 

“But what is it?” 

“You may wait to know. Miss Campbell,” 
Hiram smiled, “but it’s a scheme for giving 
Spencer Briggs a second chance with the 
school.” 

“It’s too late.” 

“It’s not too late for that, nor for some- 
thing else.” 

“What?” Jeanie’s eyes were strange with 
weariness. 

“Have you stopped being his friend, J.?” 


THE AWAKENING 


123 


Jeanie made no answer. 

“Because if you have, you’d better not. 
This is the first time Spencer Briggs has 
known that he needed a friend. Spencer is 
waking up. That was what you wanted, in 
the first place, was n’t it, to wake him up ? 
Or did you merely want an editor for the 
Mentor?” 

“Oh, the Mentor!” cried Jeanie in worry. 
“Dear knows what will happen to it now 
that Spencer says he’s going to run it all 
himself!” 

“I’m not thinking of the Mentor, but of 
Spencer just at present,” said Hiram; “why 
should you stop being his friend just when he 
needs you?” 

Jeanie’s voice was firm, and her lips were 
set, as she answered, “He has disappointed 
me!” 

Jeanie could not have explained the vague 
uneasiness that made her for several days 
disregard the compelling invitation to an 
interview which she read in the schoolmas- 


124 


THE BOY EDITOR 


ter’s eyes, so deep both with keenness and 
kindness. She could not have explained her 
reluctance more readily than she could have 
explained John Dorrel’s own earlier reluc- 
tance to talking things over with her at any 
time since Spencer Briggs’s election to office. 
Yet Jeanie was experienced enough in the 
ways of Mapleton Academy to guess the 
reason for this last. In September she had 
undertaken to combine the management of 
Herbert Spencer Briggs and of the Mentor. 
That had been her own plan, not Mr. Dor- 
rel’s ; it was possible he had thereafter left her 
to work out her own salvation. Well, she was 
sorry enough now ! 

“Mr. Dorrel, I’m tired of running the 
earth! It’s no fun to be a public-spirited 
citizen!” 

They were sitting in the school office on 
this early February afternoon as they had 
sat there nearly five months before. To 
Jeanie, whose dreams of a new schoolhouse 
had been growing all winter more bright and 


THE AWAKENING 


125 


tangible, the school office now seemed a bar- 
ren enough place, low and dusty and shabby 
and dark, — to be their Mr. Dorrel’s own 
particular room, where so many boys and 
girls on so many afternoons had talked their 
young heads off while their schoolmaster 
listened, — his vivid brown face alert, his 
slim brown hands lightly playing with a 
penholder, — as now. 

‘‘You have given me no chance to con- 
gratulate you, Jeanie !” 

“What for, Mr. Dorrel?” Jeanie's face did 
not brighten to John DorreFs smile. 

“On the success you made last Friday 
night.’’ 

“But I don’t call last Friday a success, 
Mr. Dorrel. I call it a failure, the biggest I 
ever had!” 

John Dorrel’s mobile face turned grave. 
“And failures come high,” he said. 

“Yes,” sighed Jeanie, “they seem to cost a 
good deal!” 

A smile flashed hopefulness at her. “Never 


126 


THE BOY EDITOR 


too much, Jeanie, if we take them right. A 
failure may be a liberal education.’’ 

A rueful smile pulled at Jeanie’s set lips, 
guess I don’t feel much that way about 
mine! Besides, it’s Spencer’s failure, really, 
that I’m thinking about.” 

“Best thing that ever happened to him, 
or I miss my guess!” exclaimed John Dor- 
rel. 

“Why, Mr. Dorrel! How could it be a 
good thing, a failure to trust?” 

“Spencer is awake at last, Jeanie.” 

“I can’t get at Spencer at all this week, 
Mr. Dorrel.” 

“He’s awake! He failed in history on 
Wednesday, and made two false quantities in 
scansion to-day. Therefore he’s awake, I 
repeat!” 

“Perhaps,” acquiesced Jeanie wearily; 
“but that’s only the beginning of troubles, 
for I can’t tell what he ’s going to do now that 
he’s awake!” 

“Can’t you trust him, perhaps, Jeanie, to 


THE AWAKENING 


127 

take care of himself? Perhaps it’s time 
people did.” 

‘‘Could you, Mr. Dorrel? And how about 
the Mentor? He says he’s going to run it 
himself now, whatever that may mean ! And 
how about the school ? They’re down on him 
now! And how about next year, and Spen- 
cer’s future, now that he’s waking up! O 
Mr. Dorrel, I’ve cared a lot about that boy, 
and I ’ve worked and worked over him and 
for him all this winter! And all I got for it is 
— last Friday! He forgot the town debate! 
And because of his own monograph! Mr. 
Dorrel, it’s so — so disappointing!” 

“Yes,” responded John Dorrel, “I know 
how it feels, Jeanie, this working and working 
over people!” 

“With nothing to show for it!” 

The schoolmaster pursed thoughtful, 
brown-bearded lips, then flashed a twinkle 
around at Jeanie. 

“Is that what we do it for?” he asked. 

The question made you think, made you 


128 


THE BOY EDITOR 


silent after thinking, made you uneasy after 
that, then quickly made you defensive and 
earnest. 

“Mr. Dorrel, what I mind most is that 
Spencer does n’t understand. He does n’t 
understand Mapleton Academy, after being 
here a year and five months! He doesn’t 
understand how you care and how we care 
and how we want to show it all, in the new 
school. If he had understood all that it 
means to be Editor-in-Chief — for the school, 
for you — and all it meant to speak for the 
new building, before all the town — if he had 
understood all the — the ideal — how could he 
have forgotten, last Friday? How could he?” 

“To understand,” reechoed the school- 
master, quite low, “all the ideal, — that’s a 
good deal, Jeanie, to expect of a boy.” 

“The rest of us understand. Did n’t you 
see that we do, on Friday night?” 

“See that you understand,” mused the 
schoolmaster, “ all the ideal ? ” His eyes grew 
dreamy, then his tone changed to heartiness. 


THE AWAKENING 


129 


“I saw enough to make me pretty proud of 
you. I saw that when boys and girls want a 
thing as you want the new school, you ought 
to have it!” 

“You do see, Mr. Dorrel,” explained 
Jeanie, feeling for words, “that we feel as if 
the new school building would be — why — it 
would be having an outside, a form, bricks 
and boards and things, a shape, for the way 
we feel about what you Ve done for us all, and 
for the town!” 

“And it needs an outside, a form? I see! 
Well, Jeanie,” his fluent brown hand swept a 
gesture that indicated all the ramshackle 
building around them, “we need a new 
schoolhouse and I hope we’ll get it!” 

“I should think the town would want it, 
too!” cried Jeanie, reverting to the heat of 
the Friday’s argument. “Half of them have 
gone here to school! I think they’re selfish 
to want their old town hall first, selfish, not 
public-spirited at all! Public spirit, that’s 
what Mapleton Academy stands for!” 


130 


THE BOY EDITOR 


“I hope so/’ murmured the Mapleton 
schoolmaster. 

“And public spirit/’ answered Jeanie, 
reverting in renewed dejection to the chief 
subject of her thoughts, “is exactly what 
Spencer Briggs can’t understand.” 

“Give him another chance, Jeanie.” 

“He had all his chances last Friday, and 
he lost them! Why, he might have distin- 
guished himself, before everybody! And 
I’ve worked over him all this winter, and — 
and — everybody knows I have, too! And 
then, when the time came to show them all 
that I was right about him, — he wasn’t 
even there!” 

The schoolmaster made no answer, only 
looked at Jeanie with his deep eyes of in- 
sight. At last Jeanie knew why she had 
avoided him that week. She did not know 
why shame came, or from what fault, but 
shame was there, making her cheeks hot, 
making her eyes droop. 

“When we work and work over people, is 


THE AWAKENING 


131 

that what we do it for, Jeanie, to show them 
off to the public ? Do we work and work over 
people, Jeanie, for that reward, a reward to 
our pride?” 

John DorreFs deep gaze was upon her : boy 
or woman now, this Jeanie? 

Hot, hesitant, self-defensive and self- 
doubtful both, Jeanie exclaimed, “But, Mr. 
Dorrel, Spencer did do a wrong thing! He 
failed in a trust I I can’t respect him. You’ve 
got to respect your friends, first of all. And 
Spencer failed me.” 

“And for that reason will you fail him?” 

“Mr. Dorrel, Spencer has disappointed 
me!” 

“And for that reason, will you disappoint 
— me?” 


CHAPTER VII 


THE NEW MENTOR 

It was a March evening much like a cer- 
tain November evening four months before. 
Now, as on that other evening, the wind was 
merry outside, and the fire was merry inside, 
the Campbell sitting-room. As on that other 
evening, Alan Campbell sat in the fitful fire- 
glow, keen-eyed and silent. He had had no 
reason yet to be bored with the little play 
going on before him this winter! For the 
boy’s sake, or the girl’s sake, so he had ques- 
tioned himself once, had John Dorrel sent 
Spencer Briggs to their household? Queer 
that of late Jeanie’s father had found the boy, 
who was a stranger to him, far easier to un- 
derstand than the girl, who was his own 
daughter! 

As on that other evening the sitting-room 
table was piled high at one end with Mentor 


THE NEW MENTOR 


133 


matters, papers much more difficult to sort 
and organize than had ever been any one’s 
monograph. Before these fluttering papers, 
yards of galley proof on the one hand, 
stacked piles of manuscript on the other, sat, 
as once before, an overworked editor, while 
at the other end of the table, totally absorbed 
in private study, sat another young person. 
The difference between that evening in No- 
vember and this evening in March was that 
Spencer Briggs now sat at the Mentor end of 
the table and Jeanie Campbell at the other. 

Things had come to pass in these last 
weeks. Spencer Briggs had failed in history, 
and barely passed his Latin. Such a thing 
had never occurred before. Moreover, there 
had been no March issue of the Mapleton 
Mentor. Such a lapse had never happened 
in the history of Mapleton Academy. Not 
by such means does an editor win the Vote of 
Approval ! How did these events come about ? 
Try being your own Editor-in-Chief of your 
own Mentor and find out ! 


134 


THE BOY EDITOR 


The more Spencer Briggs investigated the 
responsibilities of editorship, the more enor- 
mous they became. His sole equipment for 
practical detail was determination. Could 
editing be harder than farming? he asked 
himself. He found that it could; he found 
that the intricacies of a mowing-machine 
were as nothing compared with the intrica- 
cies of reporting the school news. He was 
dimly aware that there were people who 
wrote the “Rhymes by our Reporters,’’ but 
he did n’t know who these people were, and 
he would n’t ask, so he wrote the rhymes 
column himself. It took determination to go 
boldly forth among his fellow pupils to find 
out what was happening among them. It 
took still more to incorporate this news in 
rhyme. Spencer Briggs thrust his Latin 
scansion aside and studied the jingles of the 
previous Mentor issues. And his “Rhymes 
by our Reporters” were good, very good. 

Spencer knew vaguely that competitors for 
the serial chapters of “What Happened at 


THE NEW MENTOR 


135 

Slattery’s’’ deposited their manuscripts in a 
secret spot, known only by the editors, but 
he did n’t know where this spot was, and he 
would n’t ask, so he wrote the needed chap- 
ter himself. Romance did not come readily 
to his pen, — Slattery’s cost sleep ; but in the 
end Spencer produced a creditable piece of 
fiction. 

It was not so hard to be his own ‘‘Visitor 
from the Past.” The weighty style and the 
keen common sense of the ghost of Samuel 
Johnson as it tramped heavily about Maple- 
ton Academy came naturally enough to 
Spencer, but it was a difficult task for Spen- 
cer Briggs to be his own “Traveling Kitten,” 
gamboling through Tokio to the delight of 
primary subscribers. Spencer Briggs did not 
naturally gambol in words nor yet out of 
them. Again he fastened upon the antics of 
that kitten in previous issues the attention 
that belonged to his history, and studiously 
produced a sportive bit of travel. 

There were two departments of his paper. 


136 THE BOY EDITOR 

however, wherein Spencer sought no inspira- 
tion from previous issues of the Mentor! In 
two separate and prominent columns, he 
walked entirely on his own feet ! ^ with cur- 
ious consequences for expectant subscribers, 
subscribers who were very expectant, indeed, 
by the time their deferred Mentor appeared. 
Yet it must be admitted that an Editor-in- 
Chief could hardly get a Mentor out on time, 
when he had to write every word of it him- 
self! 

Of course, Spencer might have asked 
Jeanie to help him, or at least have asked her 
to tell him how to get other people to help 
him ; for Jeanie had known how to set every- 
body to work for the Mentor, except the 
Editor-in-Chief! But Spencer did not ask 
Jeanie, for the more he discovered what a 
task editorship was, the more he realized 
what a task Jeanie’s must have been, during 
that period when he had been writing his 
‘‘Editorial Responsibility’’! Such was Spen- 
cer’s feeling about Jeanie ; as for Jeanie’s feel- 


THE NEW MENTOR 


137 


ing about Spencer? There seemed to be 
always miles of tablecloth between them in 
these days, either dining-room table or sit- 
ting-room table. They had become politely 
conversational, so that they almost called 
each other Miss and Mr. ; stopping just short 
of this, they did nT call each other anything 
at all. Meanwhile, at home Alan Campbell 
looked on, and at school other people looked 
on, and for the first time in his life Spencer 
Briggs knew that people were looking on, but 
neither his eyes nor his manner of editorship 
betrayed that he knew. 

Oftener than ever Hiram Scott joined the 
group in the Campbell sitting-room. He 
entered quietly now, taking his middle chair 
of observation between Jeanie and Spencer. 
As he seated himself, Jeanie could barely 
control a quick movement of protest, for 
unobtrusively Hiram had abstracted a proof- 
sheet from Spencer's weary pile, and was cor- 
recting it. It was Jeanie’s place, not Hiram's, 
to help Spencer with the proof-sheets! Yet 


THE BOY EDITOR 


138 

obviously Spencer did not desire her help 
with proof-sheets or anything else. 

Now Hiram Scott in the course of the past 
weeks had become a little impatient with the 
situation at the Campbell table, this in spite 
of his own placidity of temper, and in spite of 
the excessive politeness of the situation it- 
self. He glanced from Spencer’s blue-pen- 
ciled eyes to Spencer’s blue-penciled manu- 
scripts. 

Pretty well through with the April num- 
ber now.?” he inquired. 

^‘All through but the proof-correcting.” 

“When we get through with the April 
number there ’ll be time for some other mat- 
ters, perhaps?” suggested Hiram. 

“When we get through with the April 
issue there’ll be the May issue,” responded 
the Editor-in-Chief heavily. 

“I was hoping there ’d be time for some 
other issues, not issues of the Mentor, but 
issues that concern the Mentor. Pretty stiff 
business, editing a paper, since it means so 


THE NEW MENTOR 


139 


much more than editing. I know you ’re not 
so much interested in the social side, but — ” 

‘‘Know I’m not so much interested in 
what.?” 

“Well, I mean the personal part, your rela- 
tions with the school and the town.” 

“But I am!” cried Spencer. “An editor 
belongs to his paper, and his paper belongs 
to the public ; therefore an editor belongs to 
the public, is its servant. He belongs to his 
community not only professionally but per- 
sonally. Not only his paper, but the man 
himself should be at the service of every good 
cause. Whatever his personal ambition, he 
should always be ready to sacrifice it to pub- 
lic service; for, like every other public serv- 
ant, an editor does not belong to himself but 
to his town, his State, his country.” 

“Wh-e-e-ew!” murmured Hiram. “That 
sounds something like!” 

“It sounds something like,” said Jeanie 
icily, — “‘something like’ the monograph!” 

The remark drove the glow from Spencer’s 


140 


THE BOY EDITOR 


cheek, but not from his eyes. His words 
had been like the monograph, but the 
difference lay in his question, sharply noted 
by that other, older editor over there by 
the fire. 

What is it you want me to do, Hiram?’’ 

An unwonted eagerness showed in Hiram’s 
eyes and voice as he explained, — 

‘‘You know that meeting we had in the 
Eighth Grade room after school the other 
day?” 

“What meeting?” exclaimed Jeanie. 

“Oh, a boys’ meeting!” Hiram did not so 
much as glance at her, intent on Spencer. 

“Was that a meeting?” asked Spencer. 
“I thought the boys just happened in there 
before going home.” 

“It was a meeting slightly prearranged, 
too! Byrne!” 

“I enjoyed the discussion greatly. It set 
me thinking,” reflected Spencer. 

“And set us thinking! Result, a desire for 
more meetings and more discussion and more 


THE NEW MENTOR 


141 

thinking and also more working; in short, the 
Mentor Alliance.” 

'"The Mentor Alliance, what’s that?” 
asked the Mentor’s Editor. 

Jeanie was keenly alert; she remembered 
well what Hiram had answered, when she 
had asked the same question. 

"A chance to support the Mentor cam- 
paign for the new schoolhouse, every one of 
us, for all we’re worth! To meet for mutual 
suggestions and reports every so often, with 
our Editor-in-Chief to preside and suggest 
and report, himself, to keep us all going! 
And we ourselves to keep all the town going, 
to keep the excitement hot in every store 
and every home, on the corners, in the post- 
office, everywhere! Nobody’s gone to sleep 
since Jeanie’s speech; but it’s the Mentor’s 
job in print and in person to keep up the 
campaign. "Down with the town hall, up 
with the schoolhouse!’ as Jeanie said that 
night.” 

"I know I said it that night,” commented 


142 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Jeanie dryly, “but yet you can’t Mown with’ 
a thing that is n’t up, like the town hall.” 

“Howard Stephenson and a few more have 
been hotter for the town hall than ever since 
the debate, but the majority of the town are 
for us, or can be made to be, if the Mentor 
Alliance gets to work, with a leader.” 

“With me as leader.?” asked Spencer. 

“It’s your chance, Spencer!” Hiram’s 
tone was deep with meaning, and his face, as 
Spencer looked into it, seemed in its tense 
scrutiny to be for a moment that composite 
face of all the school looking up at Spencer 
when he had addressed them. Then, too, 
Spencer had come to know Hiram Scott 
pretty well in these last weeks. 

“O Spencer, yes,” cried Jeanie, “it’s your 
second chancel” 

It was so long since Jeanie had looked at 
Spencer like that! A sudden torturing twist 
ran along the boy’s mouth as he glanced 
clearly into her burning eyes, then his lips 
showed again their firm, thin line. Spencer 


THE NEW MENTOR 


H3 

looked from Jeanie’s face to Hiram’s, which 
seemed so strangely now to be both the face 
of all the school and the face of his friend. 

‘‘My chance?” he asked, very low. 

“Your chance to show the school you are 
one of us!” said Hiram. 

“Your chance,” Jeanie was breathless, 
“to show that you can be a public servant, 
such as — oh, such as Mr. Dorrel wants us 
all to be!” 

Another quick contraction of Spencer’s 
lips. “ By doing what ? ” 

“By helping us all to build the new school- 
house! By doing for people who expect 
things of you the things that they expect, — 
that is serving the public, is n’t it?” 

Spencer’s eyes were very bright and his 
voice very far away. I am not sure, ” he said, 
“ not always sure that is true.” He was look- 
ing straight into the fire now, and his turning 
thus necessitated Alan Campbell’s looking 
straight at him. “Sometimes I think,” said 
Spencer, “that the only way to be true to 


144 the boy editor 

public service is to be true to private convic- 
tions!” 

There were times when Spencer Briggs, 
who was six months older than Jeanie and 
six months younger than Hiram, seemed to 
them both to be speaking from a distance of 
far years ahead of them, and this was vaguely 
disturbing to two young people who were 
vigorously engaged in bringing him up! 
There ensued a long silence in the Campbell 
sitting-room. 

At last Jeanie said, ‘‘That’s true, Spen- 
cer. I think I see. But I don’t see that it 
has anything to do with this present ques- 
tion.” 

Spencer’s hand toyed a moment with the 
sheets of his editorial, which, to his mind, had 
a good deal to do with the present question; 
but he made no answer. 

“The Mentor Alliance,” said Hiram, “will 
meet a week from to-night, if that will suit 
you, Spencer, for the April number will be 
safely out and over by then. And we’ll meet 


THE NEW MENTOR 


145 

here, if we may, Jeanie. You’ll be on hand, 
Spencer?” 

‘‘Surely, Hiram.” 

When Hiram went away, Jeanie stepped 
out on the porch after him into the windy, 
starry March evening. 

He turned on her sternly. “How long do 
you intend to keep this thing up, J.?” 

“What thing?” 

“Your letting Spencer alone, your not 
helping with the Mentor. You have n’t had 
a thing to do with him, really, for six weeks, 
and all because when you tried to run him he 
did n’t run to suit you. You thought you 
could pack him into a doll-carriage and push 
him wherever you pleased, but I tell you 
one thing straight, J. Campbell, Spencer 
Briggs has n’t lost any ground with the 
school since we’ve seen that he’s jumped out 
of your doll-carriage, lately! But you, now 
that Spencer’s tramping along on his own 
feet, you desert him!” 

“Desert?” asked Jeanie. “I?^’ But her 


THE BOY EDITOR 


146 

tone was calm, she looked up at the stars; 
then her eyes came back to Hiram, and he 
saw that she was smiling at him, an aloof, 
amused smile that made her look curiously 
older. 

“Hiram, I never saw you so warmed up 
over anything before ! 

“Of course, Fm warmed up over this 
campaign!” 

“Which campaign, the pushing of Spencer 
Briggs, or the pushing of the new school- 
house?” 

“Both!” 

“Hiram,” said Jeanie, “look out! Who’s 
running Spencer Briggs now, I’d like to 
know. Before you throw any stones at me 
for deserting, you wait till he does n’t run to 
suit you ! ” 

“He will run to suit me; he’s all right!” 
said Hiram defensively. 

“Spencer Briggs has been too much for 
me, and he may be too much for you, Hiram, 
you and your Mentor Alliance!” 


THE NEW MENTOR 


147 

Back, presently, into the sitting-room and 
the seat across from the Mentor manuscripts 
and the Mentor Editor. For six long weeks 
it had been hard enough to sit thus, with your 
hands and your head and your heart itchingly 
eager to be of assistance at the other end of 
the table ; but if the boy sitting in Spencer’s 
chair did n’t think your help worth asking 
for, then surely the boy sitting in Jeanie’s 
chair was not one to offer it! Meanwhile 
what was happening to that Mentor you had 
worked over? It hadn’t even appeared in 
March, and if it did appear, as now at last 
seemed hopefully imminent, in April, what 
would be its contents and what would people 
say to them ? And also, what was happening 
to that boy you had worked over, whose set, 
shut lips offered Jeanie no more clue to what 
was going on within than she knew about 
that editorial near his hand? But, oh dear, 
dear, how tired and lonesome he looked! 
How slowly his painstaking fingers traveled 
down the proof-sheets that Jeanie knew how 


THE BOY EDITOR 


to turn off so rapidly! Hiram Scott had dared 
to call her a deserter! Also Hiram Scott had 
dared to help Spencer with the proof. Why 
should not Jeanie dare, grim as he looked, 
that silent young dragon over there ? 

Very hard they tried to keep their eyes on 
their respective pages of print, that elusive 
kitten beneath Spencer’s hand, those elusive 
geometric symbols under Jeanie’s; then sud- 
denly up popped two pairs of eyes, deep and 
clear, and met long and squarely. 

A little pleading smile trembled to Jeanie’s 
lips, her eager hand was outstretched. Pass 
me that pile of proof, Spencer!” 

Spencer did not smile, he merely kept 
looking at her. ‘‘ Can you want to ? ” he asked. 

‘'Want to! I thought you did n’t want me 
to, that was all. I did n’t think you thought 
you needed my help.” 

Now Spencer did smile, a queer, grim little 
smile. “And I did n’t think I deserved your 
help, any more!” 

“0-o-o-oh!” Jeanie breathed a long sigh of 


THE NEW MENTOR 


149 


comprehension ; then suddenly her face 
flushed crimson and dimpled with joy. “Was 
that all?’’ she said. Then because flooding 
relief and understanding were making her 
clear lips feel a little unsteady, she repeated 
cheerily, “Pass over the proof, then!” 

“No!” said Spencer, and once more his 
face was locked up in impenetrable resolu- 
tion. 

“Why not?” 

“You won’t like it, what I ’ve written here, 
and I can’t help it.” 

“Why shan’t I like it?” 

“ It ’s a change of policy. It ’s not what you 
think, any more ; it’s what I think.” Spencer 
spoke from a depth of weariness. “And I 
have to say what I think, I can’t help it. 
It’s an editor’s duty. But it’s hard on you.” 

“It’s hard on the Mentor and on the 
school, too, perhaps,” murmured Jeanie, 
while anxiety clouded her brow. 

“Yes,” agreed Spencer, “I suppose it is; 
I’ve fallen into ^the dangers and difficulties 


THE BOY EDITOR 


150 

if an editor does not supervise and direct 
every department of his paper himself’!’’ 

“Spencer, please tell me, exactly what do 
you mean?” 

“This, for one thing. Read it, before you 
help with the proof.” A long fluttering galley 
sheet went flying over to Jeanie’s hand. 

She bowed intent eyes over it, reading 
rapidly. Spencer watched. When she 
reached the end, she did not look up. She 
kept her eyes on the sheet, and raising her 
hollowed left fist to her lips whistled softly. 

“What are you thinking?” cried Spencer. 

Jeanie leaned back. “I’m thinking what 
will the other people think.” Then an irre- 
pressible, fleeting smile. “I’m wondering 
what "Old Fogy’ himself will think.” 

""I can’t help that,” said Spencer, ""those 
are my convictions.” 

""Spencer, is it possible that they’ve been 
your convictions all along ? ” 

""They must have been in my head, I 
suppose.” 


THE NEW MENTOR 


151 

‘‘And so now theyVe got to be in the 
Mentor, too, I suppose?'’ 

“An editor must say what he thinks." 

“I wonder," mused Jeanie thoughtfully, 
“if he must, always." And then suddenly 
her face and her tone changed sharply. “Do 
you really believe all this ; would you yourself, 
for instance, act on your own arguments here, 
an ambitious boy like you?" 

“I've thought a good deal," said Spencer, 
“about ambition, since that night, since my 
monograph, in January." 

Jeanie gave him a long, dismayed scrutiny. 
“Spencer Briggs, I really believe you'd go 
back to a farm, after all your opportunities !" 

“I might go back," said Spencer, “but I 
should n't want to." 

“Who could want you to!" exclaimed 
Jeanie; but at her own words a sharp, sus- 
picious recollection swept her face scarlet, 
and after all these aloof weeks, shook her 
with the realization how much she had hoped 
for Spencer Briggs's future, too much to 


152 THE BOY EDITOR 

let any one interfere with it, not even him- 
self. 

‘‘Are you still willing to help me,” asked 
Spencer, “after reading that?” 

Jeanie did not answer, for a moment, nor 
look up, although she felt Spencer’s gaze 
upon her. Presently she met it, — such a 
tense gaze and so tired ! Again Jeanie smiled. 
“I don’t see that this,” Jeanie tapped the pa- 
per, “makes any difference about my helping 
you.” 

Out shot a yard of fresh proof across the 
table. “If that does n’t make any difference, 
does this make a difference? This is worse.” 

Jeanie read, more slowly than before, for 
there was more to think about. There was 
more for Spencer to think about, too, as he 
watched her! 

“It’s what I really think, you see,” he 
said, “about an editor’s duty to himself and 
to his subscribers, and to public causes.” 

Jeanie did not reply, merely read on. 

Spencer kept silent as long as he could. 


THE NEW MENTOR 


I S3 

then exclaimed, ‘‘You don’t like it, do you? 
You don’t understand ?” 

Up came Jeanie’s head. “Not understand, 
this!” 

Upon Spencer’s wondering, wistful face 
her eyes shone, radiant I 

“You like it!” he gasped. 

“Like it! Like it! How could I help it! 
Why, Spencer, even I did n’t know you had 
it in you, an editorial like this!” 

“I never dreamed you’d like it, you or 
anybody else!” 

“Or anybody else!” cried Jeanie, “it will 
be everybody else! Wait till the Mentor 
Alliance, wait till all the school, all the town 
reads this. O Spencer, this is, this is, public 
spirit!” 

“Yes!” said Spencer quietly, “I meant it 
to be. But I did n’t think you’d like it.” 

Jeanie’s face was all softly aflame. She 
brought her hands together in one glad 
clasp. 

“O Spencer, Spencer, in spite of every- 


154 


THE BOY EDITOR 


thing that’s happened, in spite of everything, 
this will win you the Vote of Approval!” 

‘'And that is what you want, isn’t it, 
Jeanie?” 

“ Don’t you, Spencer ? ” 

“Yes, more than I did, more than I ever 
supposed I could, now that I know the school 
better, now that I realize all that it means.” 

“This will win it, Spencer, this and your 
being leader of the Mentor Alliance. Oh, how 
glad and proud I shall be ! Oh, I ’m too happy 
to keep still! I must do something! Quick, 
Spencer, hand over that pile of proof.” 

Still Spencer’s face showed no reflection of 
Jeanie’s radiance. “ Suppose,” he said slowly, 
“that the Mentor Alliance did n’t take that 
editorial ” — he hesitated — “did n’t take 
it the way you do, would you still be willing ” 
— he paused — “would you still be willing 
to help me with this proof, and with the 
Mentor, just the same.?” 

“Why, Spencer, I don’t understand what 
you mean.” 


THE NEW MENTOR 


IS5 

mean that I shall always have to say 
what I think, no matter what other people 
think, or you think. That is n't always doing 
for people that expect things of you the 
things that they expect — public service, you 
called that.’’ 

Impatient a little with this strange, anx- 
ious scrutiny of Spencer’s, Jeanie cried, 
“But, Spencer, what is all this worry about? 
This editorial is splendid. In this, you’re 
doing more, much more than any of us 
expected of you.” 

“Suppose,” persisted Spencer, “that 
other people don’t like it, as you do, would 
you still be willing to help me with the 
Mentor?” 

There was a silence. At last Spencer’s low 
voice broke it. “You want the Vote of 
Approval. And I know that you do.” 

“Yes,” whispered Jeanie, “I do.” 

“Suppose I didn’t even try to win it, 
would you still — help me ? ” 

Slowly the brightness faded from Jeanie’s 


156 THE BOY EDITOR 

face before the strange, solemn searching in 
Spencer’s eyes. You could not answer such 
eyes with anything but honesty, so Jeanie 
sat thinking of herself, and the Mentor, and 
Spencer. 

^‘Suppose I even did something that would 
prevent my winning the Vote of Approval, 
ever, would you still — help me ? ” 

“But how? Why?” cried puzzled Jeanie. 

“But suppose I did!'' 

There rang through Jeanie’s head another 
voice. It had been ringing for six weeks! 
“When we work and work over people, is 
that what we do it for, Jeanie ? to show them 
off to the public ? Do we work and work over 
people, Jeanie, for that reward, a reward to 
our pride?” 

Very straight and high was Spencer’s head 
as Jeanie looked at him, as he looked at her, 
and Alan Campbell over there by the fire 
was quite forgotten. Silence, and clear, level 
young eyes that met. 

“O Spencer, you have the lonesomest face 


THE NEW MENTOR 


^S7 

I ever saw! Fll help you, yes, whenever 
you’ll let me! Now give me that proof!” 

There by the fire the tension of the weeks 
of a father’s watching slackened, and a 
prayer of thankfulness went speeding past 
the stars, for his little girl had come back to 
her own ! 

And the boy? For a sharp second Spencer 
shut his eyes, then they flashed wide, and his 
wonderful smile flashed, too. He looked as 
if he actually wanted to shake hands; then 
he said, full and clear, in Alan Campbell’s 
hearing, by the fire, ‘‘Thank you!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 

A HALF-HOUR before, they had come 
tramping and clattering into the Camp- 
bell sitting-room. It was the kind of room 
people take possession of without question. 
With like ease the members of the Mentor 
Alliance accepted the presence of Alan 
Campbell and his daughter, as being without 
a voting voice in discussion, but still as being 
two good fellows along with the rest, to be 
referred to at need. The April number of the 
Mapleton Mentor had appeared that morn- 
ing. A copy had been flung upon the table ; 
in front of it, at the table, sat the Editor- 
in-Chief. Irregularly ringed about him sat 
the Mentor Alliance, indulging from time to 
time in sundry kickings and lurchings, clutch- 
ings of each other’s collars, tweakings of each 
other’s hair, and squealings, even such mani- 
festations as all human boys exhibit when 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 159 

they need relief from too exuberant earnest- 
ness; for the Mentor Alliance was earnest 
enough, to-night ! 

If you are an Editor-in-Chief, and copies 
of your Mentor have been laid some morning 
on every desk in the High Room, by evening 
you are certainly beginning to wonder what 
people are thinking about it, and about you. 
And you are not the only person who is won- 
dering about these two questions. Jeanie 
Campbell and Hiram Scott are wondering, 
too. There are eight pairs of keen young eyes 
bent on Spencer Briggs to-night, for these 
are young people unconsciously trained to 
sharpest character study in the school of that 
past-master in this art, their teacher, John 
Dorrel. 

Out from the encircling group darts a slim 
and graceful hand, picks up the Mentor from 
the table, and finds the editorial pages. 
Raymond Ellis has a flashing, handsome face, 
a daring wit, and a daring tongue. 

‘T say, Spencer, you’ve given us a neat 


i6o THE BOY EDITOR 

little turn-about on page 3 . Our little Mentor 
doesn’t do any side-stepping or shuffling, 
merely faces right about. But what if such a 
sudden turn should make subscribers a little 
dizzy?” 

have to write what I think,” said 
Spencer. 

“But it’s a little awkward to think it now, 
after thinking something else in five previous 
numbers. Besides, it was a great idea, for 
booming the Mentor, the fighting ^Old 
Fogy ’; a great idea of somebody’s.” 

“It was n’t my idea,” said Spencer. 

“Guess we’re having your ideas straight 
enough in this issue, aren’t we, Spencer?” 
asked Sam Klein. 

“Yes, I thought I owed you that.” 

“I’m wondering,” murmured Raymond, 
“what Old Fogy ’ll say in the next Chronicle, 
after reading this. What will the old fellow 
find to hit, when he does n’t find anything to 
hit?” 

But Spencer’s face remained tensely grave. 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE i6i 


^‘Come, gentlemen, gentlemen,’^ suggested 
Hiram Scott, ‘‘let’s get a little nearer to 
business.” 

“Oh, I’m attending to business all right,” 
replied Raymond airily; “attending to some- 
thing that interests me.” 

“I should think we’d better all attend to 
the business of Mr. Dorrel’s schoolhouse,” 
said little Patrick Murphy’s falsetto pipe. 

“And Spencer’s editorial is enough to fire 
us all up to that ! ” Hiram plunged in, looking 
sharply around at them. 

“Yes!” said Raymond, with just a hint of 
rising inflection; “shall I read some parts 
from page i, ‘An Editor as a Public Serv- 
ant’? 

“ ‘ An editor’s duty is not to go with popu- 
lar opinion, but to educate popular opinion.’ ” 

“And is n’t that,” cried Jeanie, “what the 
Mentor Alliance is for, exactly, to educate 
popular opinion in this town to the need of a 
new schoolhouse 1 ” 

She glowed at Spencer, yet wondered why 


1 62 THE BOY EDITOR 

his face and Raymond’s, too, showed so little 
response. 

‘‘‘The chief duty of any public servant is 
to be true to his public, but the best way to 
that is first to be true to himself. What an 
editor owes his public is first of all his own 
convictions. He should prove to himself that 
he’s found the right road, and then ask other 
people to go with him.’ 

“Coming right down to business, Briggs,” 
asked Raymond abruptly, “what road do 
you mean, as concerns you and the Mentor 
Alliance?” 

But several hot defensive faces turned on 
Raymond. “How much plainer do you 
want any one to be?” demanded Hiram and 
Jeanie, and Patrick, too. 

“The Mentor editorials have been plainer 
than that heretofore,” answered Raymond; 
“I’m merely trying to get at this one. 
No harm in being a little more explicit, 
Briggs, if you’re going to lead us on to vic- 
tory.” 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 163 

‘T see that I ought to have been more 
explicit/’ admitted Spencer. 

“We all know where you stand on the new 
school question, Spencer,” cried Hiram, with 
a dark look at Raymond. “You don’t need 
to be more explicit than that next paragraph. 
Read that, Raymond.” 

“‘There is no chance like an editor’s to 
teach enthusiasm, there is no greater respon- 
sibility than imparting one’s own ideals to 
other people. Often other people don’t want 
them; nevertheless it’s right for an editor to 
keep right on, true always to every cause he 
thinks is right. And what a chance every 
paper has to support public causes! Every 
paper and every editor should work first for 
the good of the community, toward big 
service to many people, toward the education 
and uplifting of the town. Every paper and 
every editor belong to the town, to the 
public.’” 

“There! I shouldn’t think that any- 
body ’d doubt the enthusiasm of the Mentor 


THE BOY EDITOR 


164 

for the new schoolhouse, even if Spencer’s 
editorials don’t sound exactly like mine!” 
But at Jeanie’s last words there was an un- 
controllable ripple of amusement, not heard 
but felt. 

‘'So you’re not in the driver’s seat just at 
present, J., and you admit it.?” It was an 
irrepressible comment from a retiring but 
observant member of the M. A. 

“The driver’s seat ought to be mine,” said 
Spencer. 

“And we’ve all climbed in behind and are 
cheering,” cried jovial Sam; “that’s one way 
of saying something you’ve found grander 
words for, somewhere on that same page.” 

“This?” asked Raymond. “‘When an 
editor^and his people work, both together, 
for something high and splendid, there is 
little they can’t accomplish. When an editor 
stands by his public, and his public stands by 
him, working earnestly, both together, for the 
greatest good of the greatest number, there is 
nothing they may not attempt and attain.’” 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 165 

"‘Hurrah!’’ cried Patrick’s shrill falsetto. 

“I said,” explained Spencer, looking 
around wonderingly at all those glowing 
faces, “when his people stand by him; he, 
they, can accomplish those things then, but 
not otherwise.” 

“Well, does n’t it look as if we were going 
to stand by you, H. S. B., Editor-in-Chief of 
the Mapleton Mentor?” Sam Klein’s face 
was grinning, radiant. 

And suddenly Spencer, seeing all that 
ardent enthusiasm shining upon him now 
from eight faces, even Raymond’s, could no 
longer face that resolution to which he had 
been nerving himself for ten minutes past. 

“We’re getting some points settled, I 
think,” remarked Hiram, looking around, 
“if any such have been in doubt among any 
of our members. Therefore, let’s move on — 
to the mass meeting!” 

“Move on to a mass meeting!” Spencer 
and Jeanie gasped out in astonishment, so 
that the others, secretly familiar with the 


i66 


THE BOY EDITOR 


notion, roared out merrily, while Hiram 
explained blandly. 

“The mass meeting, our latest scheme. 
We’re giving ourselves a month to work this 
town up to that. Brown’s Hall, May 2d, 
mass meeting! Grand mass meeting! All the 
men of all this town, to discuss the new 
schoolhouse! ‘Up with the schoolhouse, 
down with the town hall.’ But they don’t 
have ladies at a mass meeting. Sorry, J.” 

“Oh, but Spencer will speak! That’s your 
scheme, Hiram! O Hiram, is n’t it.?” 

“It is, lady! It is, gentlemen! It is, Mr. 
Briggs!” 

“May 2d!” It was Spencer’s first dis- 
mayed thought, while at the same time there 
shot through the minds of Jeanie and Hiram 
that something else was to happen in that 
first week of May! “May 2d! That is the 
date of the May issue of the Mentor, and it 
took me two months to get out this one.” 

“Oh, but I’m going to help with the next, 
Spencer!” cried Jeanie. 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 167 

‘‘Could n’t be a better date if the May 
number gives us as good an editorial as this, 
— that will set us all going for the evening 
campaign!” 

But for answer Spencer turned on Hiram a 
very strange face, and his lips paled a little as 
he said, still postponing that previous reso- 
lution, — 

“ But I shall have to be more explicit in my 
May editorial; I see that, now.” 

“ But more explicit is the only thing more 
that we wanted ; was n’t that your only 
trouble, Raymond?” Hiram turned a quick 
glance in Raymond’s direction. 

“Yes, that was all I wanted,” answered 
Raymond. 

“Then I think you’ll have what you want, 
next time,” said Spencer. 

There was more talking, more planning, 
until at last, amid cookies, amity, and ex- 
pectation, the Mentor Alliance broke up its 
meeting, and with much enthusiastic noise 
issued forth into the April evening. 


i68 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Hiram and Spencer lingered a little. 

hope you don’t mind my saying, Spen- 
cer,” said Hiram, '"that I’m a pleased and 
proud man this day, over you.” 

It was not a sensation Spencer Briggs 
had ever expected to meet, — that look in 
Hiram’s eyes, — to meet and then forego! 

“Yes,” said Spencer, “I’m afraid I do 
mind your saying that.” 

“But why in the world!” 

“Because I’m going to disappoint you.” 

“Disappoint, now?” 

“Nothing is going to happen as you ex- 
pect, I am afraid.” 

“Spencer!” It was a cry from both Jeanie 
and Hiram against Spencer’s strange, reso- 
lute, alarming face. 

Then slowly Hiram’s face took on its 
set lines that reflected Spencer’s sternness. 
Hiram’s even tones were merely a trifle more 
even than usual. “Things had better happen 
as I expect, Spencer! You may understand 
that, if you value friendship!” 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 169 

‘‘O Spencer,” pleaded Jeanie, ‘"don’t fail 
us this next time, please ! May 2d, that is 
the week of the Vote of Approval!” 

Quickly, but with deep imprint upon his 
brow, Spencer looked from Hiram’s face to 
Jeanie’s, reading the same meaning in both, 
looking beyond them, too, to Alan Camp- 
bell’s, reading in that third face also the 
same meaning, the need of doing for the 
people who expect things of you the things 
that they expect. 

“I am afraid,” said Spencer Briggs, “that 
I must have my own vote of approval!” 
And with that off he went, swinging forth 
into the night. 

“What do you think he’s going to do, J. ?” 

“I think he’s going to do whatever he 
pleases.” 

“And not what we’re expecting, what 
we have a right to expect? Just when we’ve 
got the boys and the school all enthusi- 
astic?” 

“Hiram, are you perfectly sure that the 


THE BOY EDITOR 


170 

boys did n’t see that you and I did all the 
talking? Spencer did n’t.” 

“Do you mean to suggest that Spencer 
Briggs may fail us, now? a second time? If 
he goes back on me, I’ll — ” 

“Desert him?” Jeanie lifted demure eyes; 
“just because when you try to run him, he 
does n’t run to suit you?” 

Now the Mapleton Chronicle appeared on 
a Saturday, a good day for a county news- 
paper to appear, a paper that aimed to pro- 
voke and promote discussion ; for on Satur- 
days all the country-side drove to town. 
Muddy, jaded vehicles attached to muddy, 
jaded horses lined the curb. There was un- 
wonted bustle on the streets and in the 
stores. But Spencer Briggs was oblivious of 
all this, because for one thing Spencer Briggs 
was far-sighted and so always saw his Maple- 
ton of the future much more clearly than his 
Mapleton of the present; and for another 
thing, he was so absorbed in reading the 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 171 

Chronicle that he did n’t see anything at all, 
until bump! he had run into some one, and 
this some one had been as oblivious as Spen- 
cer because he himself was reading the Maple- 
ton Mentor. The two printed sheets swished 
against each other, and then backed away. 

‘‘Excuse me,” said Spencer, with direct- 
ness, “but I was so interested in seeing what 
Old Fogy has to say this week.” 

“And I hope he’s enough for you, in 
answer to this!” 

Spencer started, for looking up, he found 
himself gazing into his grandfather’s eyes. 

“You!” exclaimed Spencer. 

“Yes, me ! And ’t is a wonder we don’t for- 
get each other’s looks, seeing how often we 
don’t meet. Looked for your face once in 
January, but it did n’t appear. Been wonder- 
ing ever since where you were that night.” 

“I forgot to go.” 

“Forgot,” mused Stephen Pelham. “Was 
thinking you’d got over that.” 

“I have, now.” 


THE BOY EDITOR 


172 

“The girl made a good speech, but it was 
you I was after.’’ 

“I am going to make a speech on May 2d. 
There is to be a mass meeting then, about the 
schoolhouse and the town hall.” 

“I’ll be here. We folks over on Lost 
Mountain are all for that new schoolhouse. 
School like that man’s deserves a building.” 

They stood looking at each other. More 
than once that winter they had run from 
each other on the street; but now, having 
squarely collided, they lingered. 

“Do you want I should come over to hear 
your speech?” 

Clear, hungry eyes faced clear, hungry 
eyes. 

“No!” answered Spencer. 

Stephen Pelham’s grizzled lips trembled, 
twitched. “That’s a straight one! You 
generally do sling ’em straight.” He shuffled 
heavy boots a moment in silence, but was not 
ready to run away, nor was Spencer. 

“By the way, what’s made a turn-coat of 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 173 

you ? Why do you back out of all the argu- 
ments you Ve been giving us for five months ? 
Where do you stand finally in this ‘ Back-to- 
the-Farm" question?’' 

‘"Just where that editorial stands that 
you’re reading. Just where Old Fogy has 
been standing for five months. Only he 
does n’t seem to be standing where he was, 
in this letter to-day.” 

“How can he stand where he was, if 
there’s nothing to stand out for, no clever 
young whipper-snapper to answer? When 
the young whipper-snapper turns right 
around and agrees with him? As I read Old 
Fogy, getting at him through all the farmer 
words he puts on, he don’t seem to say any- 
thing at all, nothing but plain mad. Nothing 
makes a fighter so mad as not having any- 
thing to fight!” 

“But if he has convinced me, should n’t I 
say so?” 

“It’s a funny kind of editing notion, that.” 

“But those are my convictions, now.” 


174 


THE BOY EDITOR 


“And whose were they before, then?^^ 

,“Jeanie’s.” 

Stephen Pelham’s eyes grew a-sparkle with 
twinkles beneath his heavy brows. He 
caught hold of himself in time to turn a 
laugh into a long whistle. 

“Then your own convictions are right here 
under my thumb? ‘WeVe been talking in 
these arguments of ours a good deal about 
ambition, as if ambition were the first and 
best thing for every man to have. You hear 
of a lawyer having his ambitions, or a doctor, 
or a merchant, or a statesman having them. 
You never hear of a farmer having ambition. 
It seems as if ambition and farming couldn’t 
hold together. Perhaps that’s true. We are 
inclined to think it is; but, we ask, does that 
prove something wrong with farming, or 
something wrong with ambition? When we 
think of some of the things Old Fogy has been 
saying to us this winter, we’re inclined to 
believe the trouble is not with the farming. 
When we think of some of the farmers we 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 175 

have known, we are further inclined to be- 
lieve that some of them are too big for ambi- 
tion/ So this is what Old Fogy has led you to 
thinking, is it?’’ 

“Yes.” 

“Pity if the old fool should interfere with 
some plans I’ve been hatching for you! 
And you’ve been swallowing all he’s been 
saying?” 

“Why, don’t you yourself agree with him, 
grandfather?” 

Stephen Pelham shrugged his shoulders. 
“I, — well, yes, sometimes; but what makes 
you agree with him?” 

“What he says.” 

“Where and when? for I’ve made out the 
old fellow as more than half fool.” 

“Not here,” and Spencer drew a clipping 
from his pocket, and read, 'There’s folks that 
talk as if for a young fellow to stay by the 
farm was sticking his head in the mud, as if 
instead of flying up to the sun in that airship 
folks call ambition, the young fellow that 


THE BOY EDITOR 


176 

stays by the farm was digging a hole for him- 
self in one of his own furrows and crawling in 
and drawing the earth over his head. But 
listen, maybe it isn’t buryin’ he’s doing to 
himself, but plantin’. Furrows ain’t graves. 
Maybe some day that young farmer fellow 
will find himself stretching, pushing, burst- 
ing, growing into the finest young shoot of a 
man the soil can make of him, for there’s just 
as good secrets to be learned out of the earth 
as out of the air.’ There,” said Spencer, ‘‘I 
can’t find any arguments to answer that, and 
I’ve said so.” 

‘‘You can’t find any arguments to answer 
that.?” Stephen Pelham thundered. 

“No.” 

“Well, what’s your brain good for then?” 
Astonished, mystified, rebuffed, Spencer saw 
his grandfather’s eyes ablaze with anger at 
him. “You find arguments to answer, you 
find ’em, or don’t expect any peace or pa- 
tience out of me!” And the old man turned 
on an angry heel, and strode fiercely away. 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 177 

Spencer looked after him. ‘‘It never does 
any good for us to try to talk. I think we can 
each time, but we can't. I wonder if it's ever 
any use to try to explain anything to any- 
body." 

Still you could hardly be one of John 
Dorrel's pupils and not some time try to 
explain yourself to him, yet even to him 
futilely, as it seemed to Spencer. To tell the 
truth, in these days Spencer Briggs was not 
very easy to understand. Why should he, 
for instance, at the now numerous meetings 
of the Mentor Alliance, be at times so mum 
that Jeanie and Hiram were on tenter-hooks, 
while a caustic wit and insight showed in 
Raymond's words; and then again would the 
Editor leader of the M.A. burst forth into 
such sudden eloquence of local patriotism as 
made every one of them ashamed to doubt 
his intense allegiance to their cause! If 
Spencer could talk like that, he could sway a 
mass meeting. Listening to him, the Mentor 
Alliance saw their new schoolhouse already 


THE BOY EDITOR 


178 

proudly reared to completion and their 
Professor Dorrel in it, its proud possessor 
and its proudest possession. This Spencer 
Briggs, long alien but now advocate, was 
going to help them to accomplish, — then 
what in the world meant those dark, quiet 
references to the coming May number.? 
When the May number must be the best of 
all the year! So thought Jeanie, with wistful 
eyes toward the Vote of Approval. So 
thought the Mentor Alliance, expectant of a 
flaming editorial from Spencer on the morn- 
ing of May 2d, and a flaming speech in the 
evening. And not only the Mentor Alliance 
was thus expectant, but, as Spencer discov- 
ered, so also was the schoolmaster himself. 

Never such a man as John Dorrel for being 
inaccessible when he wanted to be and acces- 
sible when he wanted to be ; in other words, 
this teacher possessed the rare endowment of 
knowing when to let boys and girls learn 
things for themselves. Many a time this year 
had Jeanie Campbell and Spencer Briggs 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 179 

both yearned for assistance with their 
problems, only to find that they must work 
out those problems for themselves. As for 
Spencer, he did not even have a chance to 
find out whether his teacher thought his 
answer the correct one. Then suddenly, 
after weeks of baffled seeking of an interview, 
Spencer found himself near the schoolmas- 
ter’s desk, with brief opportunity for a little 
conversation amid the hurly-burly of recess. 

‘‘Mr. Dorrel, for some time I have been 
wanting to apologize to you.” 

“For what, Spencer?” 

“For my failure in Latin and history.” 

“Spencer, does one need to apologize to 
any one but one’s self for failure?” 

Spencer’s head jerked back in a quick, 
nervous way he had of receiving a new 
thought. Spencer deliberated, then an- 
swered, “But I do not feel that I owe myself 
an apology for that failure.” 

“Whynot?” 

“Because I can make up that Latin and 


i8o THE BOY EDITOR 

history some day, but some other things I ’m 
studying this year, IVe got to get hold of 
now or never/’ 

"T agree with you about that. You refer 
among other things to your duties of the 
Mentor Alliance ? ” 

‘‘Yes.” 

“Spencer,” the master’s eyes showed their 
deep glow of friendliness, “don’t worry over 
book failures for the present. So far as I am 
concerned you can better afford to fail my 
expectations of you in your history than you 
can afford to fail the expectations of the 
Mentor Alliance.” 

But Spencer’s eyes opened wide in harass- 
ment. “ But if I did fail their expectations, 
what — what would become of yours?” 

The glow in John Dorrel’s eyes changed to 
a look of keener, colder insight. “Spencer, 
the loyalty of the Mentor Alliance toward 
the school has pleased me more than any- 
thing in years, — are you not also one of us ? ” 

“Then,” said Spencer, with a quick intake 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE i8i 


of breath, ‘‘you think the Mentor Alliance 
does understand 

“Understand what ?” 

“You. Your school. What you teach us. 
For they don’t understand me.” 

There was a hint of sharpness in the school- 
master’s tone. “Spencer, the less any of us 
think whether other people understand us or 
not, the better. It is better for you to try to 
understand what the school expects of you.” 

“Mr. Dorrel, do you want me to have the 
Vote of Approval as much as Jeanie does?” 

“Yes.” The schoolmaster adjusted a blot- 
ter, straightened a book. “ Spencer, I want 
to hear you make, next Monday evening, 
the speech you did not make last Jan- 
uary!” 

The deep brown eyes met the gray ones, 
which were wide with worry. “ I do not know, 
Mr. Dorrel, what is going to happen next 
Monday.” 

None too satisfying to either of them, 
Spencer’s long-deferred conversation with 


i 82 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Mr. Dorrel! Jeanie’s was better, although it 
occupied only a few minutes squeezed from 
office hours on Friday. 

^‘Mr. Dorrel,"’ — Jeanie’s tremulous little 
smile showed, — ‘‘I think you are sometimes 
just a little mean. Two months ago you 
made me afraid I was disappointing you. 
Since then you’ve never given me a chance 
to find out whether I have disappointed you.” 

^‘Here, then, is the chance,” and the 
schoolmaster swept out a humorous arm as if 
he were presenting the chance on a salver. 

Jeanie smiled. “But have I, Mr. Dorrel, 
this year, — have I disappointed you?” 

“No, Jeanie, and I do not believe you ever 
will!” 

Jeanie grew all aglow for a moment, then a 
quick anxiety shadowed the radiance. “And 
Spencer has n’t disappointed you either, has 
he, Mr. Dorrel?” 

“No” ; but the tone was not very confident. 

“ I hope he ’s never going to disappoint any 
one again, especially next Monday night.” 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 183 

It was the evening of that same Friday. 
Jeanie had turned from the bookshelf where 
Minna was always directed to put all pack- 
ages received from the printing-office. 

‘‘Where is it?’’ asked Jeanie; “the package 
of the May Mentor, from the printing-office ? 
Why have n’t they sent it ? It must be ready.” 

“I told them to send all copies to the 
school this time,” said Spencer. 

“But why, Spencer? How queer! The 
Mentor always comes here first.” 

“This lot is all right. I ’ve looked them all 
over. I’ll have them all on the desks good 
and early on Monday morning.” 

“I’d like to see a copy, though I believe 
I’ve read every word in proof but your 
editorial.” 

“I think,” said Spencer, “that Monday 
morning will be time enough for you to read 
my editorial! It is not like the April one. 
It is explicit enough this time.” 

“I’m glad of that! For it needs to be ex- 
plicit, to fire us all up for the evening.” 


THE BOY EDITOR 


184 

Spencer said nothing. He was looking 
pretty pale this week. 

On Monday Spencer did a strange thing. 
He deliberately played truant all day long, 
all by himself, out in the country. He did 
this because he thought the strong May wind 
and the strong May sun were the only com- 
rades who could nerve him for the speech to 
be made that night. His long tramp circled 
Mapleton so that he was never out of sight 
of the schoolhouse. He saw it all the time. 
Sometimes it was the old schoolhouse where 
he had learned more than he had ever 
learned in his life before; sometimes it was 
the new schoolhouse all his friends were 
dreaming of. 

It never occurred to Spencer that in thus 
faring forth all day, he was leaving Jeanie to 
bear the brunt of his May editorial, all alone. 
Spencer had never felt so alone as he did 
to-day; but when at five o’clock he walked 
into the Campbell sitting-room and saw 
Jeanie, he realized that she, too, had never 


THE MENTOR ALLIANCE 185 

felt so alone as on that day. Hiram Scott 
was standing with Jeanie near the table. 

have been standing up for him, Hiram, 
all day long.” 

“You’d better! Who was it made him 
Editor of the Mentor?” 

“Who was it made him leader of the 
Mentor Alliance ? ” 

“Well, one good thing, he’s gone, so he 
can’t make things worse by a speech to- 
night.” 

“ I shall make a speech to-night ! ” Spencer 
faced them both. 

Hiram turned. He looked from the Men- 
tor he held in his hand to the Mentor’s 
Editor before him. His lips parted in one 
word, “Deserter!” 

Spencer braced himself, met that word! 
His voice was low. “Because of my views 
about a schoolhouse, you call me — you, 
Hiram — deserter ? ” 

“It is far more,” said Hiram, “than a 
schoolhouse, to us! But you have proved 


THE BOY EDITOR 


1 86 

that you cannot understand — Mr. Dorrel ! 
You have proved that you are not one of us ! ’’ 
Jeanie/’ asked Spencer, ‘‘do you feel like 
that about my editorial?’’ 

Jeanie stood straight as a young tree, 
facing him. “I am sorry,” she said, “for 
what you’ve written here; I am sorry for 
what you’re going to say to-night.” Level 
and fathomless-clear her eyes looked into 
Spencer’s; “but I do not desert a friend!” 

For a moment Spencer felt again the 
lonely wind and sun, felt again the lonely 
roads he had tramped all day ; then suddenly, 
looking into Jeanie’s eyes, he was not lonely 
any more. “I am not afraid any longer,” he 
said, “to say what I am going to say, to- 
night!” 


CHAPTER IX 

THE SPEECH 


Perhaps there are other Mapletons in the 
world, perhaps there is but one. Certainly 
not many towns could exhibit a meeting like 
this one, as orderly as it was intense, crowded 
to the door of old Brown’s Hall, yet very 
quiet, concentrated each one on the great 
discussion, from Alan Campbell at the chair- 
man’s table to Stephen Pelham, a vigorous 
old farmer figure, standing out against the 
wall by the door. About in the centre of the 
crowded hall. sat a group of boys, black- 
browed, taut with determination, the deter- 
mination not to let Spencer Briggs speak that 
night! Sam Klein, Raymond Ellis, Hiram 
Scott, they sat ready to spring to catch the 
chairman’s eye first, if Spencer Briggs should 
make any sign of rising. Spencer sat at the 
end of a"row by himself, having no friend to 


i88 


THE BOY EDITOR 


sit near, — alien that he was, and proved 
traitor to his cause ! 

There may be other Mapletons, but is 
there one where the boys who were to be men 
and the men who had been boys should meet 
with so little consciousness of difference of 
age, being all alike citizens, and citizens at 
present with a blood-hot difference of view 
as to what citizens should do for their town ? 

That this Mapleton and this mass meeting 
should be just what they were, on this night, 
was due to a man seated aside, so that he 
could, as ever, watch people, with deep and 
friendly eyes. Mapleton was Mapleton be- 
cause twenty years before a brilliant young 
student, just back from Germany, had 
determined to give his life for his town ; there 
are so many ways of giving a life ! Of all that 
crowd to-night, half of them had known John 
Dorrel as a schoolboy, half of them as school- 
boys had known John Dorrel. Yet Mapleton 
had never so much as given him a proper 
schoolhouse for his school! The matter had 


THE SPEECH 189 

been mentioned from time to time, like many 
another public matter, for Mapleton was 
a comfortable, solid community, slow to 
action, and complacent over things as they 
were, especially when it came to a question 
of spending money on changes. But civic 
pride had been growing as the town grew, and 
even the most conservative of townsfolk 
were beginning to be ashamed of having no 
proud public buildings to show to surround- 
ing villages beginning to point to their new 
libraries, new post-offices, new town halls, 
new schoolhouses. Quiet old Mapleton was 
at last alive to building something, but 
which, town hall or schoolhouse? Slow to 
wake to activity, Mapleton was so much the 
more violent in the discussion. It was John 
Dorrel’s own boys and girls, working as no 
one had ever worked before for the cause 
of schoolhouse and schoolmaster, that had 
warmed the controversy to the fever pitch of 
this evening. Yet it was one of their own 
number who might undo all their efforts ! The 


190 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Mentor Alliance, tense to a man, sprang up 
when at last they saw Spencer move to rise. 
Undoubtedly Hiram and Raymond and Sam 
were all severally on their feet before Spencer 
was on his, but it was Spencer whose rising 
Alan Campbell acknowledged, it was Spencer 
to whom he gave the floor. 

Standing at the side, in the middle, Spen- 
cer faced five hundred pairs of eyes, but of 
these he saw only those of his friends of the 
Mentor Alliance, black and scowling, and 
those of his grandfather and of Mr. Dorrel. 
These two faces were both of them expectant 
and inscrutable. Not even Mr. Dorrel him- 
self, perhaps, was going to understand what 
Spencer was going to say! Nevertheless a 
man must speak what he believes. 

“IVe come here to-night,’" began Spencer, 
^‘to say what my friends don’t want me to 
say. I suppose I ’m the only boy in Mapleton 
Academy who thinks Mapleton needs a town 
hall more than it needs a new schoolhouse. 
But since that’s what I believe, that’s what 


THE SPEECH 


191 

I’ll have to say. I know what everybody 
here who wants the new schoolhouse will 
think when I stand here and say I don’t 
want it. They’ll wonder why I can’t, at 
least, keep still, if I can’t say what’s expected 
of me. I ’ll have to tell you all, then, why I 
can’t keep still. 

“It’s my duty to speak because of the 
office I hold. The school chose me to be 
Editor-in-Chief of the school paper. A pub- 
lic servant owes it to his public to speak 
the truth as he sees it. Since the school chose 
me to responsibility, I haven’t a right to 
keep my convictions to myself, even when 
the school itself wants me to keep still. I 
believe Mapleton needs a town hall more 
than a schoolhouse, and I’m here to say so, 
and to say why I think so. 

“In the first place. I’d better tell a little 
something about myself. It is n’t that I want 
to talk about myself, it ’s that, when you really 
stop to think about it, every man is always 
his own best argument. That’s something I 


192 THE BOY EDITOR 

learned at Mapleton Academy. Well, then, 
I came to this part of the country two years 
ago. I was sixteen, and I thought I knew a 
good deal. Fd been to school in New York 
from the time I was six, and when I came 
from New York to Lost Mountain, I thought 
I was as lost as the mountain! I’d never 
heard of Mapleton Academy before I came, 
but at the end of that summer I walked over 
here, sixteen miles, to see what it was like. I 
saw what it was like, and I stayed. Mapleton 
Academy is a school where every day you 
learn how much you don’t know. The first 
year I learned how much I did n’t know 
about books, and this year I ’m learning how 
much I don’t know about people. An editor’s 
got to know as much as he can about both if 
he’s to be useful to the public. But to be 
useful you’ve got first of all to be straight out 
with people about what’s going on inside 
of you. Because all that you think, and all 
that you are, belong to the people who’ve 
chosen you to serve them. What I mean is 


THE SPEECH 


193 


this. I ’m editor of the school paper ; therefore, 
I ’m bigger than if I were merely myself ; and 
because I ’m bigger than myself, I Ve got to 
be truer to myself, to what I think, than if I 
merely belonged to myself. I belong to the 
school, and the town. I don’t know whether 
anybody I’m speaking to will see exactly 
what I mean ; I have n’t met anybody yet 
who did see it, what I said in my editorials ; 
but it’s another of the things I’ve learned at 
Mapleton Academy. 

‘Tt seems to me the chief thing our 
Academy stands for is helping other people 
before you help yourself. Therefore, it seems 
to me the best way to be true to the teaching 
of our school is to help the town get a town 
hall before we ask the town to help us get a 
schoolhouse. 

“ But a second point is that we ought to be 
citizens first and schoolboys second, if we’re 
to be true to what we’ve been taught at 
Mapleton Academy. The need of a town hall 
is greater than that of a schoolhouse. I’ve 


THE BOY EDITOR 


194 

been told I did n’t understand the ideals of 
Mapleton Academy, because I can’t see that 
those ideals need a better place to be taught 
in. To get others what they want before we 
get ourselves what we want, to be citizens 
and servants before we’re anything else, 
those ideals have been taught in Mapleton 
Academy for twenty years if the roof has 
leaked, and they’ll continue to be taught, 
and learned, even if the ceiling falls on our 
heads ! 

“But it’s different with the public spirit of 
Mapleton. That needs a building to express 
itself in. Mapleton patriotism needs a 
building to look at, and a building to work 
in. We want to be able to say to the new 
citizens who are coming to us, and to the old 
who’ve forgotten how much we have to be 
proud of, — ‘Look at our town hall, see all 
we’ve put into it, its new post-office and 
its new library, and its new auditorium, and 
all the clean new public offices that make 
town work seem dignified.’ Such a building 


THE SPEECH 


195 

could be the centre of our patriotism and 
from it we could learn how to feel like build- 
ing and making other things, a park, perhaps, 
a hospital. People could say, — ‘Look at the 
spirit of our town expressed in our town hall.’ 

“But as for the need of expressing the 
spirit of our school in a new schoolhouse, that 
is different. Let us show our school spirit by 
first helping the town, for Mapleton Acad- 
emy can get along without a schoolhouse. If 
we show our ideals first in public service, 
Mapleton will not need, when it wants to 
point to the spirit of its school, to say, ‘Look 
at our schoolhouse,’ but, ‘Look at our boys 
and girls!’ 

“For we boys and girls at Mapleton 
Academy can’t express our spirit in bricks 
and wood and mortar, not in that kind of a 
building. I think Mapleton ought to have a 
town hall, because it needs it; but we don’t 
need a schoolhouse, because we can learn to 
be public-spirited citizens without it ! 

“The hardest thing I ’ve been told lately is 


196 THE BOY EDITOR 

that I can’t appreciate Mr. Dorrel’s teaching, 
because I don’t believe in a new schoolhouse. 
I ’ve been told that working for a new school- 
house for him was the only way to show our 
gratitude to our schoolmaster. It seems to 
me that if we’ve understood his teaching at 
all, we ought to understand that he’d rather 
we should work for the town’s benefit than 
for his benefit. 

‘Tt seems to me the only way to show our 
gratitude to Mr. Dorrel is in building not a 
schoolhouse, but in building ourselves ! They 
say I don’t understand the spirit of the 
school, because I came as a stranger; but 
this is what I found — that the only way to 
show we ’ve learned what Mapleton Academy 
teaches is by rearing, just as high and strong 
and fine as we can, for the service of our town 
and of our country, those characters that Mr. 
Dorrel is helping each one of us to build !” 

Spencer Briggs did not resume his seat; 
instead, in an utter silence, he stalked down 
the crowded aisle and out. 


THE SPEECH 


197 

At home in the Campbell sitting-room, 
Jeanie was seated near the table. She was 
very thoughtful to-night, sitting with quiet 
hands in her lap, not expecting the mass 
meeting to be over for a long time yet. The 
front door opened abruptly, then the hall 
door into the room. Spencer stood looking 
in, dizzied for an instant by the contrast, the 
heat and hurly-burly of the hour at Brown’s 
Hall, the tense, opposing faces, the crowded 
masculine heads over which he could hear his 
own lonely words ringing, and here, — home, 
and a girl in white seated beneath a green- 
shaded lamp, lifting to him a sweet, waiting 
face. 

‘‘It’s over,” said Spencer. “I spoke. 
Nobody clapped. And my grandfather was 
there, too.” 

The two doors clanged shut as abruptly 
as they had opened, and Spencer was gone. 
Jeanie learned a great deal that evening 
about woman’s lot, the way of waiting, for it 
was two hours afterward when Alan Camp- 


THE BOY EDITOR 


198 

bell came home. He, too, flung the door 
sharply open, then stood quiet, delaying his 
news, saying instead after half a minute, 
‘Tt’s pretty good in here.’" 

He stood looking at the soft white dress, 
at the bright-gold head beneath the lamp, at 
the lifted face. 

‘‘Father, why don’t you tell me what 
happened? What’s the matter?” 

“Matter?” muttered Alan Campbell; 
“matter? Matter is that I’m afraid you’re 
growing up, laddie ! ” 

“How funny you men are to-night!” And 
Jeanie’s quick smile showed, to disappear at 
her eager inquiry, “Father, do tell me what 
happened!” 

“Spencer spoke.” 

“What did he say?” 

“What he thought.” 

Alan Campbell sank into a chair as if he 
were done with his report. 

“ But, father, do tell me, what did other peo- 
ple think about his speech, about Spencer?” 


THE SPEECH 


199 

‘‘They Ve been saying what they thought 
for two hours, but they all said the same 
thing/’ 

“Butwhat?” 

“Well, old Jud Hyde put it neatly, just 
after Spencer cleared out. He said, ‘That 
boy is his own best argument, that this town 
deserves a schoolhouse ! And a town hall ! I 
move we raise ’em both together!’ And 
we’re going to! Mapleton has waked up!” 

On Tuesday morning, so early that the 
schoolhouse was still deserted and Spencer 
Briggs was still busy putting the office to 
rights for day occupation, there came a rap 
at the door. He opened, and, led by Hiram 
Scott, in filed the eight members of the 
Mentor Alliance. The faces of the eight were 
locked tight upon the sentiments they were 
about to deliver. The Alliance ranged itself 
against the wall; Spencer stood opposite, 
near Mr. Dorrel’s desk chair. 

“Spencer,” began Hiram, “perhaps you 
can guess what we have come to say.” 


200 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘Yes, I can guess/’ 

Before Spencer’s steady spectacles, the 
eight shifted about uneasily, even Hiram. 

“Well, then, if you can guess, perhaps 
you ’ll understand without our saying it. It ’s 
not very easy to find words for it.” But 
Hiram’s tentative smile died before Spencer’s 
solemnity, and Spencer’s words. 

“It will spare both of us pain if you don’t 
say it.” 

“Pain!” 

“It is painful, isn’t it, always, to take 
sides, when friends disagree and disapprove?’^ 

“Disagree and disapprove 1” 

“Please understand,” said Spencer, “that 
I don’t blame you. I can understand how 
you feel after yesterday. It is natural.” 

“You understand how we feel after 
yesterday?” 

“Perfectly. It is quite unnecessary to 
explain.” 

Eight pairs of eyes, very wide, looked into 
Spencer’s, also very wide. 


THE SPEECH 


201 


Raymond’s words leaped forth involun- 
tarily: ‘'Briggs, I believe you’re still one who 
thinks he knows it all! There’s no need for 
us to explain anything to you? It’s quite 
unnecessary?” 

“Quite!” Spencer’s head was high and 
firm and proud. 

Sharply Raymond turned, shoving and 
drawing the others out into the hall. “Well, 
then,” said he, “wait until Friday for what 
we came to say! I suppose you remember 
what is going to happen on Friday?” 

A caustic smile caught on Spencer’s firm 
lips. “ I do ! The Vote of — Disapproval ! ” 

The last to leave, Hiram turned at the 
door, seeking Spencer’s eyes, but Spencer 
was gazing steadily at the wall. Spencer 
waited until the door closed, then he sank 
into Mr. Dorrel’s chair. “I thought the worst 
was over last night,” he said meditatively; 
“but missing one’s friends seems to be some- 
thing one does n’t get over very quickly.” 

Spencer talked very little that week, not 


202 


THE BOY EDITOR 


even to Jeanie; yet all the talking that he 
did do was to Jeanie. Every one else he loft- 
ily avoided, but never yet had he found 
the Campbell sitting-room so comfortable a 
place. With Jeanie he could frankly show 
himself tired out. And Jeanie did not talk 
much to Spencer either; she merely fed him 
very well that week, and somehow contrived 
never to seem very busy, or self-occupied, 
but was often to be found seated tranquil and 
restful in her little rocking-chair, by the 
window, or beneath the lamp. There were 
all sorts of sparkles and twinkles at play in 
her gray eyes and about her lips. She could 
afford to wait for Friday, could Jeanie! 

Friday came, and Friday afternoon, and 
at last four o’clock. Not a soul of all the High 
Room was absent on this Friday. Rule and 
regulation required, however, the withdrawal 
of two before the momentous meeting; in 
accordance, as soon as the schoolmaster, 
striding toward the door, had passed Spen- 
cer’s seat, the Editor-in-Chief rose, and with 


THE SPEECH 


203 


eyes straight ahead and unseeing, marched 
out in John Dorrel’s wake, and down the 
stairs. At the office door the master turned 
about. ‘'Coming in, Spencer? You’ve been 
harder than an eel for me to get hold of all 
this week.” 

“Did you want to see me, Mr. Dorrel?” 

“I never want to see any one who does n’t 
want to see me, except ” — and the dark face 
brightened with a smile — “except in a case 
of sin or sorrow, which hasn’t been your 
case, Spencer, this week.” 

“I’ve been afraid that even you, Mr. 
Dorrel, did n’t understand what I meant last 
Monday.” 

A quizzical, keen glance shot forth from 
beneath John Dorrel’s eyelids. “You are 
hardly complimentary, Spencer, to my pow- 
ers of understanding!” 

“I thought you probably wanted the 
schoolhouse; everybody said you did. I 
could n’t be perfectly sure, myself, whether 
you wanted it or not.” 


204 


THE BOY EDITOR 


thought it wiser that no one should be 
perfectly sure what I wanted, for as IVe 
watched the school this spring, I Ve thought 
that if boys and girls wish for a thing as 
theyVe wished and worked for this new 
schoolhouse, then they deserve and need 
it/’ 

‘'But you yourself, Mr. Dorrel,was I right 
in thinking that you yourself would rather 
we worked for the town than for ourselves.?” 

“I myself?” The schoolmaster’s eyes on 
Spencer’s were strange and deep. “I my- 
self?” 

“Have I understood,” pleaded Spencer, 
“your ideal for us? Did I understand — 
you?” 

A strange glow illumined the brown face 
with mysticism. The schoolmaster’s voice 
was vibrant. “As no one whom I have ever 
taught ever understood, before!” he an- 
swered. 

Suddenly above their heads a tornado tore 
loose from quiet; it ripped wide the High 


THE SPEECH 


205 

Room doors, it came surging down the 
stairs. 

'T think, Spencer, that noise means that 
you are wanted."" 

John Dorrel opened the office door, and in 
they poured, but Jeanie was in advance. 

“Spencer, you"ve got it! Unanimously!"" 

“What?"" 

“The Vote of Approval. It did n"t take 
long!"" 

They were everywhere around him, in the 
office, out in the hall, massed on the stairs, 
ever5rwhere, the glowing faces, the out- 
stretched hands of his friends ! 

Spencer turned white. “ I never dreamed,"" 
he stammered out, “I never dreamed you"d 
ever feel like this, toward me, after I went 
against you all, last Monday night!"" 

His bright, bewildered spectacles turned 
from one to another. “Why?"" his lips 
demanded. 

“ In this school we happen to like courage ! "" 
explained Sam Klein"s voice from the hall. 


2 o 6 the boy editor 

‘"In this school we happen to like inde- 
pendence/’ shrilled Patrick Murphy. 

“What you would not let us explain on 
Monday morning/’ said Raymond Ellis, 
“was that we happen to like — you !” 

“I thought you would think my speech 
had lost you the new schoolhouse!” 

A great glad laugh rang up to the roof. 
“But you won us the schoolhouse! Don’t 
you know the town decided that last Mon- 
day, after your speech?” 

“And the town hall?” questioned Spencer. 

“That, too, — both!” they shouted. 

“Have you been asleep, Spencer,” asked a 
quizzical voice, “this week, when all Maple- 
ton has been waking up ?” 

“Spencer,” Hiram’s tense voice was close 
to Spencer’s ear, but unheard of others, 
“will you shake hands with me? I’m not 
saying ‘deserter’ now, because I’m thinking 
‘patriot’!” 

Out shot Spencer’s hand, out broke his 
wonderful smile, but still he questioned. 


THE SPEECH 


1207 


^‘But I did n’t say what you wanted me 
to, last Monday. Do you really think I ’m one 
of you, one with you i ” 

"T guess,” said little Patrick, ‘‘we’re 
wanting to be one with you as public- 
spirited citizens, as you taught us to be, last 
Monday night.” 

“But,” murmured Spencer, “it was some- 
body else who taught me that, once.” 

Then the crowding hands began to clutch 
Spencer’s and to shake and shake, pressing 
in from the hall, down from the stairs. And 
in that half-hour Spencer Briggs knew that 
the grip of comrade hands was something he 
could never again be happy without. No 
matter of how many bigger papers he might 
live to be Editor-in-Chief, and no matter if 
again, as life might demand sacrifice, he 
might have to risk foregoing that grasp for 
the sake of speaking forth his own convic- 
tions. 

Long before the school had dispersed, 
Jeanie had slipped away, too happy to linger. 


2o8 


THE BOY EDITOR 


preferring to wait by herself for the coming 
of her men-folk home. But Jeanie was not 
yet quite grown-up, not quite inured to 
waiting. It was a forbidden thing, always, to 
approach Alan Campbell in the Chronicle 
office on a Friday evening, the day before the 
Chronicle’s weekly appearance. Jeanie held 
out until five-thirty, but then she had to seek 
her father — had to ! She stole cautiously back 
to the sanctum behind the noisy presses. 

‘‘Father?” 

“What does this mean?” 

“Are n’t you nearly done?” 

“What does this mean?” 

“Father, I had to come. Spencer has won 
theVoteof Approval, unanimously! The school 
said, among a lot of other things, that he’s 
the most public-spirited editor we ever had.” 

“You are a bold boy to come here, on 
Friday, to tell me all that has happened to 
Spencer Briggs.” 

“Because I couldn’t wait for the next 
that’s to happen to Spencer Briggs.” 


THE SPEECH 


209 


“What?’’ 

“You’ll take him into the office here next 
year, won’t you now, father, and you’ll let 
me tell him so to-night?” 

“I will notr 

“Father, but you will take him on the 
Chronicle ? you will ? ” 

“I made up my mind on that subject 
some months ago, in January, on the night of 
the debate.” 

“Oh, but, father, that’s not fair! Think 
what Spencer has done since then!” 

“I made up my mind on that night,” 
reiterated Alan Campbell; then rose wrath- 
fully from his busy editorial chair, and turned 
his tall girl about by the shoulders, with a 
teasing, tender little tweak of a loose red 
curl. “And that’s all a girl gets who inter- 
rupts her father on press night ! Run home ! ” 

Nothing to do but go. 

“Evening, Miss Campbell,” said a grim, 
arresting voice. 

“Mr. Pelham!” exclaimed Jeanie. 


210 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘The same!” 

Then Jeanie’s joyous pride of the afternoon 
came pouring back on her. “O Mr. Pelham, 
do you know what ’s happened Spencer has 
won the Vote of Approval as Editor-in- 
Chief, won it unanimously!” 

‘Ts that something rather good.f^” 

“It’s the highest compliment the school 
can pay an Editor-in-Chief! Unanimously!” 

“Spencer didn’t mention it,” mused Spen- 
cer’s grandfather. 

“ Have you seen him ? ” 

“Just now. Had a little business with him ; 
that little plan of mine I mentioned to you 
once.” 

“O Mr. Pelham, what plan?” 

“I’ve just been inviting your Editor-in- 
Chief to come back to Lost Mountain next 
year, and let me make a farmer of him.” 

“Oh, what did he say?” 

“Said he’d come, and said he’d stay!” 


CHAPTER X 

THE CAREER 

Right then and there, with the clattering 
Chronicle office behind her, with the little 
May clouds touched by the gold of the dip- 
ping sun high over her head, did Jeanie 
Campbell have it out with Spencer’s grand- 
father ! She faced him with blazing eyes. 

won’t let Spencer go back to a farm on 
Lost Mountain!” 

“Won’t let.^” grinned Stephen Pelham; 
“who’s given you the say-so about my 
grandson?” 

“When you’ve worked and worked over 
people, and waited and waited, then you 
have a right to a say-so! I’ve worked and 
waited for Spencer all this year!” 

“I’ve worked and waited for him all his 
life!” 

“Well, then,” flashed Jeanie, “I don’t 


212 THE BOY EDITOR 

see why you can’t be nice to him right 
now.” 

‘"Nice to him?” 

“Mr. Pelham, let him have his chance!” 

“What chance?” 

“The chance I think I Ve got for him for 
next year, — to show what’s in him!” 

“Can’t show what’s in him on a farm on 
Lost Mountain?” 

“A boy like Spencer show what’s in him on 
Lost Mountain!” 

“Humph! I recollect knowing a boy like 
Spencer once, who did show what was in him 
on Lost Mountain!” 

“I don’t believe there ever was a boy just 
like Spencer! You don’t appreciate him if 
you think so. He ’s waked up since you knew 
him, last summer, and now he ’s got to have 
his chance next year!” 

“You sure you’ve got hold of that chance 
for him, whatever it is ? ” 

“No-o-o, not quite sure yet, but,” and the 
flame surged to Jeanie’s cheeks, “I’ll make 


THE CAREER 


213 


it happen now, for Spencer has earned it; I’ll 
make father and I ’ll make Spencer, too ! Mr. 
Pelham, you shan’t get Spencer away from 
me, after the way I’ve hoped and tried. 
Spencer Briggs shan’t go back to fizzle out, 
now, on Lost Mountain! I’m his friend if 
you are his grandfather! And you shan’t 
have him!” 

‘‘Well, one thing I see Spencer’s learned 
this year!” 

“What?” 

“Learned to make a friend!” 

“I’m not the only friend he’s made. So, 
Mr. Pelham,” suddenly Jeanie’s face was all 
coaxing, “why can’t you be his friend, too, 
and not interfere with his career?” 

“Spencer’s free to choose.” 

“Free to choose my chance for him,” 
glowed Jeanie. 

“When you get it! Provided — ” 

“Provided — ” 

“That you’ll let him be free to choose my 
chance for him, which I’ve got already.” 


214 


THE BOY EDITOR 


Jeanie looked baffled. 

‘‘Come/" pressed Stephen Pelham, “that’s 
fair enough, to let Spencer choose between 
our plans for him.” 

“It’s fair,” hesitated Jeanie, “but it is nT 
— right. For you don’t understand Spencer. 
I do. I’m his friend.” 

“Andl’m — not?” 

They stood looking at each other with 
searching eyes. Over Jeanie’s clear face a 
great puzzlement was growing. 

“What now?” asked Stephen Pelham, 
studying her in grim amusement. 

“You look,” explained Jeanie with knot- 
ted, puzzled forehead, “so like Spencer some- 
times that it mixes me all up in what I’m 
thinking and saying.” 

“And you’re Spencer’s friend. Suppose 
now that you’d ever come to think Spen- 
cer’s grandfather Spencer’s friend, how about 
your being friends with the old fellow then as 
well as the young one?” 

“You’re very queer,” said Jeanie, “you 


THE CAREER 


215 

and Spencer. You make me want to smile 
just when I want to be mad.” 

‘‘That will do for a starter,” rejoined 
Stephen Pelham; “we’ll come to shaking 
hands yet over Spencer, you and I.” 

Here certainly was challenge enough for 
Jeanic now to make her father give Spencer 
the chance for which she had pleaded with 
Spencer’s grandfather! But Jeanie had 
regained some of her tact, in spite of the need 
of immediate action ; she did not pursue her 
cause on press night. She let her father eat 
his usual hurried, silent Friday supper, and 
escape back to the office unassailed by any 
importunate daughters. It was just as well. 
There are times when fathers enjoy their own 
initiative. 

Spencer slipped away from Jeanie and 
the Campbell sitting-room very early that 
evening, on a secret errand. He was to say 
nothing to anybody, so Alan Campbell, hail- 
ing him from the door of the Chronicle office 
that afternoon, had enjoined, — to say no- 


2i6 


THE BOY EDITOR 


thing to anybody, but to appear in the dusky 
sanctum back of the presses at seven-thirty on 
this Friday evening. 

The two editors sat with heads bending 
close so that their voices might be heard 
above the clatter of the Friday printing. 

‘‘Spencer, I haven’t much time to talk 
to-night, but yet to-night is the time to talk 
if I ’m going to have any domestic peace over 
Sunday. Also, in a case of man to man like 
this, I prefer to do my own talking rather 
than to let my daughter do it for me. Not to 
waste words. I’ve been watching the Senior 
class of Mapleton Academy for ten years, and 
I’ve been watching you for one year. I need 
an assistant editor. Will you accept the 
position, your duties to begin on the first of 
September?” 

Spencer’s eyes and mouth grew round. 

“To be,” he breathed, “a real editor, so 
soon!” 

“You’ve been a real editor for some 
months.” 


THE CAREER 


aiy 

*‘Only on a school paper, only on the 
Mentor/" 

“Does that seem to you a small matter?"" 

“It does not seem to me a small matter, 
now, but I should think it would seem a small 
matter to you, who have a real paper."" 

“The editing of a school paper may be the 
best preparation for editing a real one. It 
depends on how you take it."" 

“Have I taken it, then, do you think, Mr. 
Campbell, in the right way?"" 

“Since January; not before."" 

“ Since — that night ? "" 

“Since you burned your theories of edi- 
torial responsibility and took to practicing 
them. I made up my mind to offer you this 
position on the night you burned your 
monograph."" 

“I wasted half this year on my mono- 
graph."" 

“It was not time wasted. You learned an 
editor"s duties in theory first. It would only 
have been time wasted if you had never 


THE BOY EDITOR 


!2I8 

put the ideal into practice. You called your 
monograph preparation for your life work. 
It was, indirectly. Only a man stops talking 
about a life work when once he has one ! 

have been watching you, Spencer. The 
first time I made up my mind that you 
should be my assistant was when I saw you 
burn your monograph; the second time I 
made up my mind was when I heard you say, 
the only way to be true to public service is to 
be true to private convictions ; and the third 
time I made up my mind was when I heard 
you put that sentiment into practice, in your 
speech, last Monday night. I have been 
watching you, Spencer Briggs, and you have 
passed my examination; a hard one, for I 
would be as careful in choosing a man for 
my Chronicle as in choosing a man for my 
daughter. 

Will you be my assistant, Spencer, on the 
Chronicle?’' 

Silence. 

‘‘Do you accept the position?” 


THE CAREER 


219 


said Spencer slowly, ‘Tor I have 
promised my grandfather to be a farmer, on 
Lost Mountain!’’ 

It was perhaps to be characteristic of 
Spencer Briggs’s march through life that 
people would always be hailing him from 
doorways to turn aside from his straight- 
ahead path. On Saturday morning it was 
his grandfather’s voice that waylaid him, a 
stentorian summons from the door of the 
Twin Pines. The low, dusky inn parlor 
afforded privacy for conversation. 

“Anything happened since I saw you,” 
asked Stephen Pelham, with abrupt curi- 
osity, “to make you want to take back that 
promise to come to the farm ? I heard rumors 
of a chance of another sort you might have.” 

“I shall not take back my promise, 
grandfather.” 

“But anything happened to make you 
want to? ’Bout time you and I got right 
down to understanding each other, Spencer.” 

“I thought we understood each other 


220 


THE BOY EDITOR 


better than we ever had before when you 
asked me yesterday to come back to the 
mountain/’ 

‘'You wanted to come?” 

“I was glad you wanted me to,” answered 
Spencer, “because I had thought you did n’t 
think I amounted to much.” 

“Have had some opinion of what you 
amounted to ever since that essay of yours a 
year ago, ‘The Two Sieges of the Civil War,’ 
the prize essay!” 

“You read it!” 

“Know it by heart.” 

“Grandfather!” 

“For a smart boy, Spencer, you’re a dumb 
one!” 

“But you never said anything about that 
essay. I did n’t suppose you cared.” 

“Me not care about writing! But neither 
did you say anything about those newspapers 
of mine you sneaked off with.” 

“I didn’t suppose you cared anything 
about them.” 


THE CAREER 


221 


Best collection in four counties. Happens 
there’s nothing I do care so much about as 
writing and papers!” 

“You, grandfather! But farming! I 
thought you cared everything for that.” 

“Second choice. Had to. Luck tied me to 
Lost Mountain. So made the best of it. 
Reading and writing my only way of getting 
off the mountain.” 

“Writing?” 

“What’s your opinion now of Old Fogy’s 
style?” 

“Are you, grandfather. Old Fogy! Can 
you, did you, write like that?” 

“You think that’s something like writing, 
then, that "Back-to-the-Farm’ stuff? I kind 
of liked playing with farmer talk like that; 
not so much worse than my plain everyday 
talk; I only put it on a little. Farmer talk 
suits farmer thought. What did you think of 
the thought now?” 

“You know thatyour arguments convinced 
me that I ought to go back to the farm!” 


222 


THE BOY EDITOR 


‘‘Well/’ exploded Stephen Pelham, “ril 
be blowed! That was the last thing I was 
after!” 

“Then what were you after? Why were 
you so angry the other day when in the Men- 
tor I agreed with you ? And you did want me 
to go back to the farm when you asked me to 
yesterday?” 

“ Kind of puzzled, sonny, are n’t you, as to 
what’s inside your old grandfather?” 

“Yes, I am. But I want to do what you 
want me to.” 

You do want to do what I want you to ? ” 
As once before hungry eyes searched hungry 
eyes. 

“Yes, grandfather.” 

“Well, that was what I wanted to find out, 
maybe, — if you’d do what I wanted if I 
asked you. I kind of hankered after that, after 
a — after a grandson. That showed me you 
were that, for you meant, and you mean it.” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, then, I did n’t mean and I don’t 


THE CAREER 


223 


mean to let you come back to the farm! It’s 
the last thing I want of you. And why was 
I so mad about your coming around to my 
‘Back-to-the-Farm’ arguments? Because I 
want you to go out into the world where I 
could n’t go, and I want you to be sure it’s 
the thing for you to do. I wanted you to find 
arguments for your own side, because every 
young fellow, that’s ever to get to the top of 
himself, has got to be dead sure at the start 
that he’s on the right road. Old Fogy’s 
reasoning is straight enough for a lot of folks, 
but not for you, and I wanted you to find 
answers to him, for I don’t want farming for 
my grandson — nor shilly-shally either.” 

Spencer’s wide, blank eyes and parted lips 
were something of a reward to one who loved 
teasing. 

"‘’Nother thing I wanted to find out yes- 
terday: I’ll tell you, Spencer; once I knew a 
boy like you — ^an ambitious young man.’ 
That boy is still walking around in my boots. 
He wanted to write, he wanted to be an edi- 


224 


THE BOY EDITOR 


tor. He studied out the pith of every news- 
paper he could find. But he had to stay all 
his life a farmer on Lost Mountain. All that 
I can say for that young fellow is that he 
stayed on top of the mountain and he did n’t 
let the mountain get on top of him. I wanted 
to know if you had the grit that fellow had. 
It’s all he has got, the man in my boots, grit! 
So’ve you! I’ve proved it now, and that’s 
enough. 

‘‘Now, man, are you ready to tell me, 
have n’t you got a chance at something 
better than farming ? But wait a minute till I 
tell you another thing. Know what I ’ve had 
up my sleeve for you all year, my plan.? I 
want you to take the cash that grew out of 
the old farm on Lost Mountain, and go off 
somewhere and learn to be the newspaper 
man, the writer fellow, I could n’t be. Under- 
stand a bit better, now, what’s inside your 
old grandfather?” 

“ I don’t need to go away. I ’ve a chance to 
stay here and learn. Mr. Campbell asked me 


THE CAREER 


225 

last night to be his assistant on the Chron- 
icle/’ 

‘‘So that” — Stephen Pelham drew a long 
whistle — “was the girl’s plan for you!” 

“Whose? Jeanie’s? It was her father’s 
plan.” 

“Spencer, you’re a smart boy, but where 
that girl’s concerned you’ll never be so smart 
as your grandfather at putting two and two 
together, even if I am only an old farmer on 
Lost Mountain.” 

“ But it ’s a great deal, I think,” said Spencer 
gravely, “to be a farmer on Lost Mountain.” 

“Those were n’t your sentiments when you 
came from the city two years ago. You’ve 
got more than two years’ growth since then. 
What was it, Spencer, since then, that’s 
taught you your respect for farming?” 

Calm and judicial the young voice. 
“You!” said Herbert Spencer Briggs. 

Out sprang two firm hands, and gripped 
each other. Then and there Spencer proved 
that he had learned how to shake hands ! 


226 THE BOY EDITOR 

‘‘And now/’ remarked old Stephen Pel- 
ham with a puckered grin, “I’m going to 
look up that girl and see if she’s ready to 
shake with me, too!” 

It was a momentous Saturday morning for 
Jeanie Campbell, crowded with conversa- 
tions that made her thoughtful, and cast 
light back on the past winter, illuminating 
much that she had not understood. People 
seemed to want to have everything clear 
with Jeanie on this morning. Her father 
came first, talking more fully and more 
eagerly than his wont, explaining his long 
reticence in regard to a choice of an assistant, 
summing it up finally, “You see, laddie, I’m 
as fond of following my own line with people 
as you are, without hint or help from any- 
body. Remember you’re a chip of the old 
block, and trust your daddy to mind other 
people’s business the best he can, just as you 
would, especially when he knows you want 
him to!” 

An hour later, old Stephen Pelham was 


THE CAREER 


227 


experiencing for himself the spell of Jennie’s 
sitting-room, he, too, wanting to explain to 
Jeanie. But it did n’t need very much ex- 
planation, for two pairs of eyes began to 
twinkle too early in the talk for many words 
to lag after when understanding had run 
before. As once before, Jeanie found her 
hand grasped in a horny grip. Shining and 
merry, Jeanie’s eyes were lifted beneath her 
red-gold curls. “Mr. Pelham, do you know, 
I think I ’m going to like you almost as well 
as I do Spencer!” 

And, third gentleman to claim Jeanie’s 
sitting-room and sympathy, came H. Spencer 
Briggs himself, he also, like the other two, 
eager to talk it all over. Listening to all 
three, Jeanie formulated for herself a thought 
that touched her lips with fleeting humor. “I 
guess all men are always boys, and always 
hungry, hungry for some woman-person to 
understand them. I guess perhaps that’s 
what I’m for.” 

Spencer Briggs was still pouring forth 


228 


THE BOY EDITOR 


much Spencer Briggs, when Jeanie sprang 
up. ‘‘Let’s go and tell Mr. Dorrel all about 
everything!” she cried. 

Sometimes the schoolmaster’s Saturdays 
were a matter of sacred privacy, with gentle 
Mrs. Dorrel as a most effective dragon of 
protection before the study door; but, 
luckily, to-day the big library-study was 
open to visitors. It was a great cheery room, 
with numerous windows to make it sunny 
in spite of the many dark-browed book- 
cases. 

In all the freedom of a blithe May Satur- 
day, how a boy and girl could talk, seated 
one to right and one to left of the deep 
reading-chair that held the schoolmaster’s 
slim, gray-flanneled form! Yet all they said, 
in all that hour, he had perhaps guessed 
before, John Dorrel with the dark, deep- 
seeing eyes. It is not only the old who love 
retrospect. There is nothing young folks love 
better, provided it is a brief retrospect, of a 
week, a month, a year, and provided it is a 


THE CAREER 


229 


retrospect of accomplishment, of success. 
So Jeanie and Spencer talked until the twelve 
o’clock whistle boomed, and they had to rise, 
though even then, with the odor of Mrs. 
Dorrel’s dinner warning them of time, they 
lingered a little. 

‘Tt is queer,” said Jeanie, "‘this year is 
nearly over, and yet it still has the feel of 
beginnings, even more than in September.” 

“ It has been a year of beginnings for me,” 
said Spencer. “Looking back, I feel as if this 
year I had begun my education, my educa- 
tion in people.” 

“That was what we wanted, wasn’t it, 
Jeanie,” said the schoolmaster, “once upon 
a time, long ago, in September? I have 
observed, Spencer, that people have always 
learned a good deal by being Editor-in-Chief 
of the Mapleton Mentor.” 

“I could never have been an Editor-in- 
Chief if Jeanie had not helped me, from 
beginning to end. I see that now. And it 
makes me feel” — here honest amusement 


230 


THE BOY EDITOR 


touched Spencer’s over-earnest eyes and 
mouth — ‘‘it makes me feel that I don’t 
amount to so much as I thought I did, in 
September.” 

The mysticism touched John Dorrel’s 
brown eyes. “That, Spencer, is the way 
being helped sometimes makes us feel,” he 
said. 

“Oh, but Spencer,” cried Jeanie, “I don’t 
feel that way about it at all, because you 
amount to so much more than you did in 
September that I don’t feel, now, as if you ’d 
ever need my helping any more.” 

“ And that, Jeanie,” said the schoolmaster 
quietly, “is the way helping sometimes 
makes us feel.” 

A sudden solemnity shot through the sun 
and sparkle of the May noon. The highest 
compliment people ever paid John Dorrel 
was that sometimes they forgot his presence 
altogether. 

Something new and strange had touched 
Jeanie Campbell’s May-morning face, had 


THE CAREER 


231 


darkened and deepened her wide gray eyes. 
A little quiver ran along her lips that smiled. 

“Spencer, once I wanted you to say 
^ thank you’ to me, for everything; but now 
I think I never want you to say ‘thank 
you’ any more.” 

Spencer’s man-voice rang in answer, his 
hand was stretched toward Jeanie’s for a 
comrade grip. “But all the same I do say 
‘thank you’ now, for everything!” 

And that reader of faces, standing for- 
gotten there, saw that in that moment Jeanie 
Campbell ceased forever to be a boy, as for a 
second time that morning Spencer Briggs 
demonstrated that he had learned how to 
shake hands 1 


THE END 


\ 


CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 

U . S . A 




SEP 29 1918 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


